"Small Wares in Metal," by John Lockwood Kipling

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Small Wares in Metal

John Lockwood Kipling (1837-1911)

1891

Illustration for Beast and Man in India, p. 369

If Kipling observed and was knowledgeable about everyday life in India, naturally, in his roles there as art school director and curator, he was even more fascinated by its local arts and crafts, and chapter XVI is on animals in Indian art. [Commentary continues below.]

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"Birds and animals are often fashioned in metal," writes Kipling, in the text surrounding this illustration:

and always with purely decorative intent. The resolute conventionalism of the Indian artisan is shown in the silver mouse from Muttra here sketched with half a dozen small wares, and in the brass owl from Bengal. The parrot and the peacock are old and constant types, but the brass bison is the work of a jungle artist, who from direct observation has learned that a bison's horns meet and join over its brow. And there his lesson ended. [368-69]

In other words, the "jungle artist" had noticed one thing, but that was his only concession to nature. Kipling loved and collected Indian street art, that is, prints, paintings, drawing and so on (see Kemp 315), and he enjoyed clay and metal objects too. Of the clay ones, he writes here, "the rustic classes in Europe do not produce for their amusement anything so good" (367).

Bibliography

Bryant, Julius, and Susan Weber, eds. John Lockwood Kipling: Arts and Crafts in the Punjab and London. New York: Bard Graduate Centre Gallery; New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2017.

Kemp, Sandra. "My Bread and Butter: Kipling's Journalism." In Bryant and Weber. 301-27.

Kipling, John Lockwood. Beast and Man in India: A Popular Sketch of Indian Animals in Their Relations with the People. London: Macmillan, 1891. Internet Archive. Contributed by the Royal College of Physicians in Edinburgh. Web. 22 January 2017.

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Created 22 January 2017