A capacity building & technical upgradation initiative by SETU…

Terracotta pottery is one of the oldest traditional crafts all over the world, specially having an enormous cultural significance in India. It is also one of the most sustainable processes. Despite this, most potters are struggling hard to make ends meet due to low income. Market is mostly domestic & local. The product range is traditional, with very less value additions. Due to voluminous & fragile nature of product, the sale gets further restricted. Not only the local income is low, the process is very laborious and involves a lot of drudgery.

SETU tries to focus on uplifting local crafts and promoting potters to help them generate sustainable livelihoods. By capacity building & infrastructural upgradation, design & skill development, market readiness training, etc, SETU has upgraded these crafts to international standards.

With this objective, we have developed a full range of terracotta products with new designs, functionalities and value addition to make them exportable and more lucrative. However, our artisans still had to do a lot of hard work by painting them by hand. This resulted in slow production, more labour costs and rejections. Therefore, in August 2022, SETU introduced them to new techniques and sponsored electrical spray machine. This has not only increased productivity, but also improved quality and reduced drudgery, making the entire process much more viable!

The artisans are quite happy as they don’t have to do intense manual work and with the time saving, they can invest their time in creating newer designs & develop a wider product range!