Glassmakers of Papanaidupet
2007
Directed by Marie-Dominique Nenna
Collection From Africa to India
For several generations in the village of Papanaidupet, some 140 km north west of Madras, a large number of the inhabitants have specialised in the manufacture of beads from tubes of glass that have not been blown but drawn. Melting the raw glass, drawing out the tubes only 3mm in diameter, cutting the tubes into tiny cylindrical beads, reheating and polishing, stringing the beads on a cotton thread to make up the bundles, all these stages are required to create a finished product that will eventually be sold throughout India and beyond. The technical and manual processes still to be witnessed in these traditional Indian workshops take us back the very beginnings of the history of glass.