Clay Works

<p><b>Until recently, polychrome terracruda (air-dried clay) sculpture has been virtually absent from exhibitions and scholarship on South Asian art history. This is beginning to change. </b><br>As early Indic texts and accounts published in the last few centuries attest, this malleable and dynamic medium has played a fundamental role in the region’s visual arts.<br><br>This boundary-breaking book traces the longstanding interactions between clay, sculptors, and their clienteles; shaping and reshaping religious practices, social formations, and aesthetic values across the region. The first chapter explores the history of terracruda as artistic medium; the following two chapters present long trajectories of practice in the Buddhist Himalayas and the Deccan; and the latter two chapters offer insight into terracruda sculpture’s role in cultural transformations—the 18th and 19th-century artistic florescence in Bengal, and British colonial displays of terracruda figures at international exhibitions. Employing an ecological approach that recognizes substances, things, and objects as players in the world, <i>Clay Works</i> celebrates the contributions of clay’s supple plasticity and ephemerality and brings a much-needed and timely perspective to South Asian art history.</p>