Malika Amin with 20” diameter plates by artists such as Jeram Patel, Laxma Goud, Nalini Malani, Bhupen Khakhar and Anjolie Ela Menon.

Put Your Money Where Your Art Is Sandhya Bordewekar chats with Gujarat-based collectors Malika Amin, Anil Relia and Rakesh Agrawal.

Glass has Class

ALEMBIC GLASS INDUSTRIES IN BARODA IS ONE OF THE OLDEST glass manufacturing companies in India. Its owners, the Amins, also have one of the most unusual art collections in the country. Since the early 1950s, the Alembic Group has supported art initiatives. From the time the MSU’s Faculty of Fine Arts was established in 1949-50, they have commissioned artist-teachers like Sankho Chaudhuri to create works for its factories and sprawling housing colonies. However, it was only in the late 1980s that Malika Amin began to take a more active interest in the fine arts and began to acquire works from the Faculty’s students – commissioning art for her home and corporate offices all over India.

In the 1990s, with encouragement from local artist-friends, she hosted Alembic’s first artists’ camp, Interact 94, which invited artists from all over India. Amongst those who responded were Nalini Malani, Dhruva Mistry, Gulammohammed Sheikh, Bhupen Khakhar, Akbar Padamsee and Prabhakar Kolte. Visits to the Alembic Glass Factory significantly altered the approach to the camp. Watching the molten glass being shaped into tumblers, bottles and cups made many of the visiting artists want to work with the ‘new’ medium. A technician explained the intricacies of glass-making and guided the group in their experiments. Some beautiful glass artworks were created, all of which adorn the Amin home in Baroda.

Four years later, the Amins hosted Interact 98. This time, the artists included were Laxma Goud, Badri Narayan, F. N. Souza, Jatin Das and Atul Dodiya, among others. Working with glass was very much on the agenda. “As a manufacturer of glassware, it was exciting to see beautiful works created with it,” said Amin, “These glassworks form a part of our Indian art collection and we take great pride in them. Bhupen Khakhar was a dear friend whose works we cherish. I also like Anjolie Ela Menon’s pieces.”

These artworks in glass are very different from conventional reverse paintings on glass. At the Interact camps, the technical know-how of Alembic engineers made it possible to fuse special colours into the glass in hightemperature furnaces. Artists worked on ready-made Yera (the Alembic brand), on opal plates as well as on large platters. Often, the colour of the final product was poles apart from what the artist expected. "Most artists took to the medium but some were apprehensive. Anjolie Ela Menon's firing of a plate didn't go too well; it resulted in a broken plate. But, she carefully picked up the pieces, mounted them on a canvas and created an exquisite work," said Amin.

An exhibition of the artworks made at the camp enthused a number of art-lovers and emerging artists from Baroda, which encouraged Amin to organize two more camps, one of which focused exclusively on glass painting. Unfortunately, few of the artists who took part in the camps continue to explore the medium on their own - perhaps because the infrastructure required is too expensive. Interact, however, did bring about an interesting dialogue between art and industry. In the Faculty of Fine Arts, teachers such as M. Sashidharan began to coach students to work with glass on an informal basis. Alembic has always allowed students to visit their manufacturing facilities; tours are conducted where experts elucidate the processes involved in glass-making.

When Malika Amin's daughter-in-law, Krupa, who runs Space: The Artists Studio, decided to host a Glass Art Camp in 2006, the response was tremendous. At this camp, the processes involved in sand-blasting glass were demonstrated - these led to glass platters with translucent, textured surfaces. Some artists also integrated commercial design stickers used on Yera glass products into their artworks.

Although glass-making goes back many centuries, collecting glass art in India is relatively recent. Responds Malika Amin, "I make it a point to see innovative glass-making techniques during my travels. The stained glass at the Cathedral in Canterbury, UK, made a lasting impression on me. However, I am more intrigued by current developments in glass. Recently, I came across some young artists working in glass in Prague and acquired their works."

A Passion for Prints, Pichhwais and Portraits

Ahmedabad-based Anil Relia's first experience of 'collecting' an artwork was when he was a student in the 1970s at the Faculty of Fine Arts, MSU. Nasreen Mohamedi, who was a teacher there at the time, was showing her work at the Faculty's gallery and Relia fell in love with a painting priced at Rs. 800 - a sum beyond a student's means in those days. How Relia managed to collect the work is an example of what being a passionate collector is all about. Relia convinced Mohamedi to lower the price of the work, taking into account the fact that he was only a student. They agreed on Rs. 500, at which point he asked if she would mind being paid in instalments of Rs. 50 a month. Relia confesses that it took him over a year to purchase the work, since he tripped up on a couple of instalments.

Now Chairman of the Archer Group, Relia was a commercial screenprinter for many years. He then started Archer Art Gallery and a design studio - where he produces the serigraph portfolios of well-known artists. So, naturally, prints are his first love - and he has thousands of them in his collection - the oldest one dating from 1825. Relia has many oleographs that were created by Indian artists in Europe in the 19th century. One such is a dry point by Mukul Dey, which was exhibited in London in 1925. His favourite, though, are chincole lithographs by M. F. Husain, which were made in Europe in the 1970s.