Resources

Primary and secondary resources:

• Raw leather
• Sodium chuna
• Pickle tool
• Babool ki chaal
• Oil
• Haladi [kota stone]
• Becalite stone
• Glass
• Chemical dyes
• Formic acid
• Ari gum
• Scale, pencil
• Wool (for kashida)
• Akiai.

Sourcing of material-raw leather (locally called kachha chamda) is sourced from Nasirabad. Production is order based. Buyers contact the association authority and then they get orders. In Jawaja association fixes prices and thus there is very less flexibility.

Leather work in Harmada

Harmada is a remote village in Ajmer, a district of Rajasthan. This region is completely under developed with a very low literacy rate. There is no tele- network and no mobile network found. Harmada is around 3 km from Tilonia; they have very little exposure to other parts of the country.

About the craft

This craft of leather products was started by Aruna Roy who is an active member of SWRC (Social Work and Research Center Tilonia). She gave the training and taught villagers the process of converting raw leather into the finished products. Her training helped these villagers to earn their livelihood who were initially involved in agriculture, which didn't fetch them enough money. This craft is done with the sole purpose of serving a practical need. Artisans have started working for the export market; they supply to Mumbai, Delhi (Connaught Place, Janpan etc). These artisans are satisfied with their work. There is no competition among these artisans. They all work together in one house; it is like a small unit. Thus it can be said that the craft is evolving.

The basic difference between the leather work of Jawaja and Harmada is that the artisans of Harmada specialize in making leather chair, wallets, hand bags, jootis which have hand embroidery [kashida] done on it. Kashida work is mainly done by females in their houses. Apart from Kashida work, they do patch work and sequins work on jootis. Artisans get wages of around Rs 50 per day.

Raw Materials

They get leather sheets from Delhi [Karol Bagh market]. Initially artisans used to get raw leather and all the processing of raw leather was done there itself. But now they got processed leather sheets in order to save on time and other tools and equipments are locally available and are repaired in the village itself.

Process

Kashida on leather products

• Trace and cut out the desired pattern from the leather sheet.
• Draw motives/design for Kashida on these leather patterns. (The buyers mainly give these designs to the artisans).
• Take 4 strands of woolen thread and fill up the motives with the desired colour combination. [Mostly chain stitch is used for this kind of work. And colours like red, royal blue, yellow are used in Kashida.