LAHORE - “We were studying in our final semester at College of Design Hala (Sindh) but our college closed its doors for us and after that we were standing at crossroads until PIFD opened its door for students coming from various cities of inner Sindh and offered us three weeks workshop on traditional ceramics techniques,” said Mehran Khan, a student from Tando Allahyar district.
He was talking to The Nation at an exhibition which kicked off yesterday featuring 130 ceramic works titled Initiation by Students of Ceramic and Glass Design Department hailed from Sindh’s Halla city at Pakistan Institute of Fashion and Design (PIFD). Internationally acclaimed ceramist Sheherezade Alam inaugurated the exhibition.
Mehran said all these ceramics works have been produced in a three week extensive workshop course conducted by ceramists from Nepal Gopal Kalapremi and Pukar Risal. ‘We learnt new techniques including Raku Ware and ceramics glaze and surely the three weeks workshop at PIFD provide us many hidden avenues which we would not imagine with just living in our towns.’, he added. Other students from cities Nasirpur, kashmore, Hyderabad, Mityari and Hala expressed their happiness on attending a three weeks workshop.
The workshop course focused six ceramic techniques like Kintsugi, Etching, Lustre Glaze Firing, Sagger Firing, Raku Ware and Terra Sigillata. Kintsugi, Luster Glaze, Sagger,
Students shared that they learned how to build kiln equipment for firing and glazes according to their individual requirements in limited resources. The results of this workshop have been extremely productive in terms of learning and practicing ceramics, they said.
Ceramist Sheherezade Alam said that these students come from Sindh put their tremendous efforts in just three weeks workshops and come up with contemporary ceramics works. Blending and fusion of Nepal’s ceramist also provide students an opportunity to have international learning techniques in ceramics.
Gopal Kalapremi of Center for Arts and Design, Kathmandu University, Nepal is an expert of ceramic techniques and glazes. Gopal said all the students were like a white paper for me on the first day of the workshop, but at the end they made the unique contemporary ceramics and glaze products displayed at exhibition.
Terra Sigillata and Raku techniques are traditional ceramic techniques, largely practiced in South East Asia especially in Japan and China, whereas Etching technique is the modern technique. In this workshop, students learned to make their own glazing recipes according to the locally available materials, department head Hamran Babrak Assistant professor and focal person of Ceramic and Glass Design Department said that. PIFD has recently opened Ceramic and Glass Design Department as its 7th department.
The exhibition will continue till April