The Craft & Routine Behind India’s Matka

Edge of Humanity Magazine

4 weeks ago

Photographers Sylvia Furrer and Holger Hoffmann are the Edge of Humanity Magazine contributors of this documentary photography. From the project ‘Matka – India’s Water Pots’. To see Sylvia and Holger ’s body of work, click on any photograph.

Unlike in our part of the world, temperatures above 35°C are not the exception but the rule in Rajasthan. The opposite is true for running water, especially in rural areas. Several times a day, women carry water from the water source to their homes in clay water pots called matka. A matka holds 10 to 15 litres, and women carry them on their heads, sometimes two at a time.

At home, the water is then stored in one or two larger matka. The drinking water stays cool for longer and is naturally filtered through the tiny pores in the clay, leaving impurities and toxins behind. In rural areas, many households still do not have running water, so the demand for matka remains high.

In Sangasani, a village with a population of 1,200 located 20 kilometres southeast of Jodhpur, practically the entire village makes its living from producing matka. We counted over 50 manufacturing sites. Here we met Mangu Khan Kumbarh and were able to witness him, his family and his neighbours at work. As his surname suggests, Mangu Khan belongs to the Kum(b)har caste, derived from the Sanskrit word Kumbhakara, which means potter. He learned the pottery from his father, who in turn learned it from his father. This has been the case for centuries in all families here in Sangasani. His four-year-old son will also become a potter.

The clay for manufacturing the matka, reports Mangu Khan, is mined on the banks of the nearby Luni River and mixed with sand and sawdust until it has the elasticity to prevent cracks or breaks during firing. The manufacturing process begins with the soft clay being shaped into lumps of equal weight without scales, but with a great deal of experience, and then formed into a cylinder-like vase shape on the potter’s wheel. This shape is then lined up in the shade to dry in order to achieve a certain firmness.

The next day, the pot, which is still damp, is shaped into its final form using a moulding board and a wooden mallet. We can watch Mangu Khan’s white-bearded father, sitting on the floor in his blue lunghi, pressing the moulding cushion onto the inside of the pot and continuously tapping the outside with the wooden mallet to give the pot an even wall thickness and an astonishingly perfect spherical shape. This takes him 10 to 15 minutes. This demonstrates their mastery: in the end, one matka looks like the other.

Now the matka are ready and are laid out in the courtyard for two days to dry completely. In the late afternoon of the third day, Mangu Khan and his wife carefully stack the raw matka in the round, brick kiln with an open top. There is room for over 60 matka. Then they cover the entire dome structure with old clay shards.

Shortly before sunset, Mangu Khan lights the kiln at the base and then, taking turns with his wife, shovels chopped branches and straw from the fields into the opening at the bottom of the kiln. The firing process takes around five hours, during which time the family gathers around the kiln to chat. It is important that the heat is distributed evenly and does not fluctuate too much. During a break, Mangu Khan tells me that they light a kiln every evening, as do all the potter families in the village. The sun has now set and I look up at the sky: everywhere, the evening glow is streaked with black clouds of smoke.

The next morning, the matka, which have now cooled down, are artfully stacked and wait there, glowing pink in the rising sun, until they are transported by lorry to the traders in the city.