Khanyari tiles and the long road to revival

When the orders fall or there is a slump in the trade, 76-year-old Ghulam Mohammad Kumar, a potter, holds on to hope as he loves his work. His craftsmanship lies in making the famed Khanyari tiles of Kashmir. And he is perhaps the last remaining artisan to make Khanyari tiles.

Khanyari tiles come from the Khanyar area of Srinagar. These handmade glazed tiles were once an important part of the architecture of Kashmiri homes. They adorned the walls and floors of the old city.

Saleem Beg, convener of the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage, Jammu and Kashmir, says these tiles were used to furnish the open spaces in shrines. He says, “Since they were made from clay, they retained warmth.”

Revival initiatives

It started falling out of favour 30 years ago when the use of ceramic and stone tiles became commonplace. Some efforts have been made in the past decade to revive Khanyari tiles.

In 2022,  Zoya Khan, an architect and interior designer from Kashmir, attempted to popularise these tiles by exhibiting Ghulam’s work in Srinagar. However, it did not fetch them more orders.

Still, Ghulam has not given up. Over the years, he has not added any new designs or colours to the tiles. “I make the same designs that my father and grandfather used to make. One is square tiles featuring the chinar leaf motif, another is star-shaped tiles, and yet others are with the khatamband design,” he says. Khatamband is a ceiling design unique to Kashmir in which pieces of intricately carved wood are interlinked without glue or nails.

Mostly red, green and yellow colours are used on these tiles. These colours are derived from iron dust, copper dust and lead, he adds.

At one point of time, he started paying more attention to the star-shaped tiles as customers preferred them over the other tiles. Pointing out the USP of these tiles, he says, “These tiles are anti-slip, unlike ceramic tiles.”

To revive Khanyari tile-making, Ghulam has taught the art form to a young man Srinagar, Mohammad Umar Kumar. “Still, I think the art will die with me,” Ghulam laments. He rues about the absence of any help from the government. “No one has come forward to revive the art form. If I had a big workshop, I could at least teach more people,” he says.

Umar, his student, is practical. He makes these tiles besides other earthenware. “I have taught the art to a few of my cousins but we don’t get constant customers for Khanyari tiles like we do for other earthenware. Some months are completely dry. This art form requires a lot of hard work but has low returns,” he says.

Umar isn’t keen on the idea of updating its motifs and style. “Since it is a traditional art form, it cannot be fiddled with. If we use new designs, it will lose its uniqueness. Then no one would want to buy the tiles,” he explains. He feels teaching tile-making at the school and college level can help revive its popularity.

The use of Khanyari tiles in Kashmiri homes may have come down but they can be seen in other spaces. They adorn the foyer of the Jammu and Kashmir Bank headquarters at Srinagar, and have also been used in the house of advocate Shabnum Lone, apart from restaurants, hotels, and local homes.

Beg says revival of these tiles could bring them back to the market. “There is a huge revival of furnace-based handmade products like tiles in the whole country, but those items are now design-driven. Our artisans also need to collaborate with designers, and designers have to actively participate in bringing the Khanyari tiles back,” Beg says.

Looking back

Ghulam dropped out of school after the eighth grade and started assisting his father at the age of 15. Associated with the art form for the past 60 years, “despite little work and low profits”, it has never occurred to Ghulam to pursue something else.

Of his four sons, only Bilal Ahmed has learnt the art fully. Ahmed says, “Despite being handmade and cheaper, customers sometimes feel it is costly and don’t buy it. They feel it is just a piece of hardened clay. This is also the reason none of my four siblings has taken up the art form as a profession.”

These tiles were priced at Rs 25 a unit in the past. Due to the climbing cost of raw materials, he increased the cost of tiles two years ago. “Now, it is priced at Rs 40 per tile. There isn’t much profit in this work so I don’t think the new generation can take it up as a means of livelihood,” he adds.

Around 30 years ago, Ghulam says there was a community of potters in the Khanyar area. They used to make these glazed tiles. “Around 40 families in Khanyar used to make them. Each family used to make around 500 tiles daily when there was demand. Now I am the only one left. Five families stopped making the tiles in the 1990s,” he says.

He lives in the bylanes of Kaw Mohalla in Khanyar. The paucity of space in his workshop does not allow him to stock tiles. “I make the tiles when I get orders. The tiles are prepared and delivered to the customer within a week,” he says.

The making

Ghulam sources the clay for the tiles from Chattergom village in the Ganderbal district and Kuzar village in the Budgam district of Kashmir. “No machines are involved in the making process. My wife helps me and my sons sometimes pitch in,” he shares.

The making process involves mixing the clay, wedging it into tiles, firing the tiles once without the glaze and then firing them with the glaze in a furnace at 1,000-degree celsius. This helps achieve the perfect glazed tiles. The tiles are left overnight in the oven to cool slowly.

Rise and fall

Saleem Beg believes the use of Khanyari tiles was prevalent until the 1970s. “They were essentially used in open spaces. These were both decorative and functional. There was no other flooring material for social spaces like drawing rooms. These tiles were locally made and available in several colours,” says Beg.

Their popularity fell when Dasil Anjuman, an organisation of masons, started manufacturing cement tiles locally in the 1970s. He recalls: “They made black and white chequered tiles from cement and lime, offering them as an alternative to the glazed Khanyari tiles. These tiles had uniformity compared to Khanyari tiles. The latter are uneven as they are glazed inside a furnace.”

Khanyari tiles also started losing out because of the influx of tiles made in other states.