{"id":1219,"date":"2018-02-05T17:22:42","date_gmt":"2018-02-05T11:52:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/museumofmaterialmemory.com\/?p=1219"},"modified":"2018-02-06T19:16:51","modified_gmt":"2018-02-06T13:46:51","slug":"window-world-krishna-mitras-doll-cabinet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/museumofmaterialmemory.com\/window-world-krishna-mitras-doll-cabinet\/","title":{"rendered":"A Window into the World: Krishna Mitra’s Doll Cabinet"},"content":{"rendered":"

TEXT BY RAI SENGUPTA
\nPHOTOS\u00a0BY MR. ASHOK
\n<\/strong>Gurgaon, Haryana & Kolkata, W.Bengal, India
\n<\/em><\/p>\n


\n<\/em>In the spring of 1957, my grandmother, Krishna Mitra, then a nineteen year old bride, walked into her husband\u2019s home in south Calcutta with hopes, dreams and a wooden showcase to house dolls. She journeyed from her paternal home- in an old neighbourhood in the older part of the city- to her husband\u2019s art deco style house with its trellised windows and gravel path. And along with her wedding trousseau went the showcase, a present from her father.<\/p>\n

In those days, it was customary to include a cabinet for dolls in a bride\u2019s wedding presents; this was at a time when most brides were no more than ten or twelve years old. The doll\u2019s showcase possibly travelled with many child brides, across paddy fields and city by lanes, keeping pace with palanquins and jostling on boats across Bengal\u2019s wide rivers. For these child brides, the doll\u2019s showcase served as an antidote to homesickness, as a pacifier to deal with the pangs of separation at a tender age. In a strange new life, it was a vestige of the familiar and the known, a reminder of a home so far away. And though my grandmother was no child bride, custom demanded that a doll\u2019s showcase follow her to her affinal home. Complete with a set of miniature silver utensils- the wooden showcase found pride of place in one corner of the marble floored drawing room in her new house. But my grandmother dreamt beyond the roles of domesticity that the young owner of such a showcase was generally relegated to. She wanted to fill this wooden cabinet, with its glass paned doors and rounded patterns, with dolls from across the world. And that\u2019s just how it came to be.<\/p>\n

The showcase originally only came with a three-piece set of porcelain dolls: individual statues of Romeo and Juliet, and a clock with the two lovers from Verona engraved on its two sides. Inherited by my grandmother from her own mother, this hundred year old set is no longer complete: my great-grandfather broke the clock by accident sometime in the 60s. But Romeo and Juliet stand, their slender porcelain bodies poised gracefully, enduring one decade after the next, united forever in my grandmother\u2019s glass doored showcase.<\/p>\n