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Bankura Terracotta: The Clay Horses of Panchmura

In a village of potters in Bankura district, river clay is still coaxed by hand into the long-necked terracotta horse that became the emblem of Indian handicrafts.

In Panchmura, a small village in Bankura district of West Bengal, a potter's working day ends the way it has for generations: with a horse taking shape on a wheel — not a whole horse, but legs, neck, and head thrown separately, dried, and joined by hand. The Bankura horse is not a toy and never was. It began as a votive offering, a clay animal left at village shrines, and it still carries that gravity in its long neck and steady, forward gaze.

History and origins

The horse belongs to the terracotta country of the old Mallabhum kingdom, whose Malla kings ruled from Bishnupur between roughly the 16th and 18th centuries. The Mallas built Bishnupur's temples sheathed in terracotta panels showing scenes from the Ramayana and Mahabharata, court life, and hunting, all modelled in the same clay the potters still dig today. The craft of the horse grew up beside that temple tradition, and Panchmura — about 21 kilometres from Bishnupur, on the banks of the Dwarakeswar river — became its principal centre.

For centuries the horses were ritual objects, offered at wayside shrines and at the shrines of Dharamraj, the folk deity of the region, and of Manasa, the snake goddess, in thanks or in hope — for a cure, a harvest, a child. The potters also made elephants, Manasa chali (ceremonial pitchers for the goddess Manasa), and images of Shashthi, guardian deity of children. The horse was the form that travelled furthest: adopted as the emblem of the All India Handicrafts Board and pictured on an Indian postage stamp in 1957, it became a shorthand image of Indian folk art itself.

Materials

Everything in a Bankura horse comes from close at hand. The clay is dug locally, from riverbanks and ditches around the village, and it is the only real raw material. It is cleaned by crushing and sieving out silt, sand, and pebbles, then mixed with measured quantities of fine river sand and water until it reaches a workable consistency. Small batches are kneaded by hand; larger ones are trodden with the feet. There are no glazes or paints in the classic form — the colour is the fired clay's own red or black. The tools are equally plain: the potter's wheel, fingers, and bamboo implements known locally as chhiyari for incising decoration.

How a Bankura horse is made

A Bankura horse is never thrown in one piece. Its hollow body is built from seven separate wheel-thrown parts: the four legs, the neck in two parts, and the face. The body is formed from wheel-thrown cones and cylinders assembled by hand, with extra clay worked in to smooth over defects. The leaf-like ears and the tail are made in moulds and fitted into grooves left in the body.

Drying is the most delicate stage. The assembled figures are first dried in the sun, with small holes pierced in the body so the inner and outer surfaces dry at the same rate; unequal drying causes cracks. They are then kept for about six or seven days in a closed room, brought out into the sun again, and only then fired — about five hours in the traditional kiln, under controlled heat from burning wood and dry leaves.

The final colour is decided in the kiln, not on a palette. If smoke escapes through the vents, the oxidising atmosphere produces the familiar brick red; if the vents are sealed, the reducing atmosphere turns the clay black. Labour in the village is divided by long custom: men generally prepare the clay and run the kilns, while women lead the surface treatment, ornamentation, and finishing.

Motifs and design language

The Bankura horse is an exercise in reduction. The neck is stretched tall and slightly arched, the ears pointed and leaf-like, the legs straight and columnar, the body a smooth, unadorned curve. There is almost no attempt at naturalism: the horse is an idea of a horse, distilled until only its alertness remains. Decoration is restrained — incised lines and small stamped motifs around the neck, saddle, and legs, made with fingers and bamboo tools on the leather-hard clay. The same vocabulary runs through the rest of Panchmura's output: elephants, temple plaques, household vessels, and Manasa chali pitchers. Other centres — Rajagram, Sonamukhi, and Hamirpur — make their own versions, each with a local style, but the Panchmura style is generally regarded as the finest.

The GI tag

On 28 March 2018 the craft was registered as a Geographical Indication under the name "Bankura Panchmura Terracotta Craft", covering the terracotta horse and, in a separate entry on the same date, the terracotta Manasa Chali. The GI ties the name to the place and the method: a Bankura horse, in the protected sense, is a hand-built terracotta horse from Panchmura and the surrounding district, made by the traditional process. It gave the potters a legal claim on a name their village had made famous and that had long been copied far from home.

How to identify an authentic piece

An authentic Bankura horse gives itself away by its construction. It is hollow and surprisingly light, assembled from separate wheel-thrown parts rather than cast solid or moulded in one piece. Look at the joints — where the legs meet the body, where the two halves of the neck join, where the moulded ears sit in their grooves — and you can usually see the maker's hand in small seams and slight asymmetries. No two are exactly alike. The surface should show the incised decoration of the village style, not a smooth, machine-perfect finish, and the colour should be the even red or black of kiln-fired clay rather than a painted coating. Mass-produced imitations in plaster, resin, or moulded ceramic are heavier, perfectly symmetrical, and lack the hollow construction. Buying from the village itself, from state handicraft emporia, or from the potters at craft fairs is the surest route.

Where the craft stands today

Around seventy to eighty artisan households still practise the craft in Panchmura, most of them from the Kumbhakar community, whose very name means potter. Its celebrated names include Rashbehari Kumbhakar, a National Award recipient credited with refining and popularising the contemporary form of the horse; Baul Kumbhakar, a State Awardee who has exhibited in Korea, Honolulu, Russia, and the United Kingdom; and Jagannath Kumbhakar, who has taken part in cultural exchanges in France. Panchmura has gradually become a cultural tourism destination, and visitors can watch the horses being shaped, dried, and fired.

The economics remain precarious. Most horses are sold through agents who buy cheap in the village and mark the work up sharply in the bazaars of Kolkata, Bishnupur, and Delhi, so little of the final price reaches the maker. A documentary portrait of third-generation potter Buddhadeb Kumbhakar, filmed for the People's Archive of Rural India, follows a working day from digging clay to firing the kiln — skilled, physical labour that pays a potter's wage, not an artist's. The GI tag, the village's growing profile with visitors, and direct sales at craft fairs and through state emporia all help, but the craft's future rests on the same thing it always has: young Kumbhakars deciding that the wheel their grandparents worshipped is still worth sitting at.