Page:The Industrial Arts of India.djvu/40

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brass work of Nagpur, consisting of lotas, katoris , and cooking vessels, is distinguished by its pure traditional forms. Brass wares of the same excellence of form are manufactured also a little higher up the Waingunga at Bundhara and Pauni, but more extensively at the former place. The articles produced are cooking utensils, and water vessels of all kinds used by natives, handlamps, candle- sticks, and candelabra, drinking cups, bells, and fountains. The braziers there also work in bell metal, pewter, and copper. Excellent brass and copper utensils are made at Brahmapuri in the Chanda district. The town of Chanda itself was formerly distinguished for its workers in the precious and baser metals but much of its fame is now lost. Brass and bell-metal vessels are largely manufactured at Sambulpur in the extreme east, and at Chichli in the Narsingpur district in the north of the Central Provinces. In the wild southern district of Bustar new brass pots are manufactured from old ones by the Ghasias. The hatchets and knives always to be seen in the hands of the people of this district are made at Madder, and other places, on the Upper Godaveri, which bounds the Central Provinces toward the south-west. Steel of excellent quality is forged at Tendukhera in the Narsingpur district, and at Katangi, Jabera, Barela, and Panagar in the Jubbulpur district, along the Nerbudda, which bounds the Central Provinces on the north.

At Dewalghat in Berar [Hyderabad Assigned Districts], not far westward from Bundara, steel of fine quality is forged.

In the Bombay Presidency, Nassik and Poona and Ahmeda- bad have always been famous for their copper and brass work. Besides the ordinary house pots and cups, the braziers of Ahmedabad make very graceful and delicately cut brass screens [possibly derived originally from the beautiful brass gates of Shah Alum’s tomb], and pandans , for holding betel [pan] leaf, small boxes of very graceful form, covered with the most delicate tracery, and known to Europeans as spice boxes. Their wares belong to two chief classes : the first of copper,