Infrastructural Aid for Blue Pottery Artisans…
A capacity building initiative…

Place: Bagru, Jaipur
Month: Jan to Feb- 2025

SETU strives to help grass root artisans improve their working conditions & work processes. Right infrastructure helps improve the quality of their work, connects them to bigger markets, and gives them a chance to earn better incomes. The motive is also to reduce human drudgery, & improve process efficiencies. There is also a need to optimize raw material & fuel consumptions for long term sustainability.

SETU has been working with blue pottery artisans, based in Bagru, since last 10 years.

As we started working with the artisan group, more issues related to process & infrastructure came to light. The group had been facing numerous problems while manufacturing the products, which made their products non-competitive & more expensive in the market :

  • excessive breakage of the artefacts during curing
  • Black spots leading to rejections
  • Excessive consumption of LPG
  • The furnace space not being fully utilized.
  • Incapability in producing objects of larger dimensions.
  • Desired quality not being achieved during curing of products.

Blue pottery production requires curing of raw products at 800oC in specially designed furnaces. Large sized refractory grade tiles & stands of high quality are of utmost importance for arranging the raw pottery in the furnace. The refractory brick tiles, especially in larger sizes, are quite expensive & sometimes, non-affordable for the artisan group. In 2017, SETU had sponsored these refractory stands & tiles which proved to be very useful to the artisans. Now, after 7 years of continuous usage, the tiles were worn out & broken, resulting in reduced process efficiency, higher labor, and quality issues.

Therefore, SETU again sponsored them high quality refractory grade tiles to the artisan group. Following improvements have been observed after the use of new refractory tiles:

  • The new tile size is 20”x24″ against original tiles of size 17”x21″.
  • Due to above, they can now make large sized products up to 16″ diameter, as against 10-12″ dia limitations earlier.
  • Now due to large tiles, only 3-4 rows are sufficient. This reduces man power drudgery & a saving of 2 man-hours per furnace loading.
  • Quality of products has improved due to reduction in the level of breakages and black spots by 50%
  • The furnace capacity is now more fully & evenly utilized.
  • For every cycle, the consumption of LPG has reduced by at least half a cylinder.
  • Since the heating is more even & the level of products is more balanced, the overall lustre & quality of pottery has improved.

Artisans have thus been able to reduce drudgery, improve work efficiency, and produce better quality products with lower rejections and breakage rates.