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Category: Art & Decor

The brass coin box or karata

Kalabati’s Treasure

Dating back to 1939, this coin box was a part of my grandmother’s wedding trousseau and of the two or three boxes she was given, this one survived the stretch of time and the tides of displacement. In case of a fall or dent, my grandmother would lose no time in taking it to the neighbourhood metalsmith for a quick fix. Sometimes she would ask me to accompany her, an excursion that I would enjoy every morsel of.

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Travels of a carpet: From a Persian otagh jolodasti to a Georgian living room

One such thing is a beautiful Persian carpet, which started its life in Qom where my husband’s grandparents bought it while on holiday more than 50 years ago. In the centre is a medallion, a tradition harking back to early 15th century Persian Manuscript covers. The medallion has four flowers coming off at each corner topped with a palm tree motif.

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Mian Baljit Singh's sword

The Blade of Mian Baljit Singh

During his days in Lahore, communal tension began rising in the wake of an imminent independence and possible partitioning of the land. To protect himself, Mian Baljit Singh bought this sword. But apart from that, I believe that it was also considered as a symbol of status and style.

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Woven khadi from a wedding trousseau

When we first found them, I had no idea about the rug’s rich history, about the fact that they were gifts at such an important moment in my mother’s life. It was only when she began talking about them, caressing the rug’s threads, grazing her hands across the woven tapestry, that I realized that an object could mean so much to a person.

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Sri Ram Puri's Gramophone

Three objects of decades old affection. Part I: The gramophone

I never knew my nana, my maternal grandfather. Everything I know about him is through conversations with my mother. His name was Sri Ram Puri and he worked as an engineer with the royal families in Punjab and Rajasthan. This gramophone belonged to him.

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About

The Museum of Material Memory is a digital repository of material culture of the Indian subcontinent, tracing family history and social ethnography through heirlooms, collectibles and objects of antiquity.

Through storytelling, each post on the Archive reveals not just a history of objects and the people they belong to, but also unfolds generational narratives about the tradition, culture, customs, conventions, habits, language, society, geography and history of the vast and diverse subcontinent.


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