As the festive season gets underway, handmade is a hit. With the auspicious Ganesh Chaturthi heralding the mega festive season in India, artisan sellers on Amazon are already offering eco-friendly Ganesha idols. For many sellers like Arvind Handicrafts and Nirvi Handicrafts, handmade Ganapati idols have spelt runaway success. “If you’re lucky, we may still have four or five Ganapati idols left from the huge festive collection we created ahead of Ganesh Chaturthi,” says Atish Chavan of Nirvi Handicrafts from Maharashtra.
Festival shoppers go earth friendly
All of Chavan’s home décor and crafts products, including Ganesha idols, are purely handcrafted by local artisans using 100% earth friendly material. “Our best sellers this season were our natural coloured terracotta Ganesha idols, because our customers prefer to colour the idols themselves for the Chaturthi festival. These were followed by our other handmade Ganapati idols coloured with all-natural, eco-friendly paints,” shares Chavan. For the small scale artisan sellers at Arvind Handicrafts too, nearly a thousand Ganesha idols were handcrafted this month.
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Our handcrafted Ganapati as well as Laxmi idols have been very well accepted by customers looking for all-natural ways to celebrate their festivals
Asha Agarwal, from Jaipur’s artisanal community, has also been showcasing her handcrafted brand of wooden Ganapati sculptures on Amazon Saheli’s ‘handmade stand’. The feisty woman entrepreneur behind Shri Handicrafts shares that her artisanal team have been creating a wide variety of eco-friendly idols for the festive season. “Our handcrafted Ganapati as well as Laxmi idols have been very well accepted by customers looking for all-natural ways to celebrate their festivals,” she says.
Chavan too shares that Indian customers today increasingly prefer material like terracotta, clay and natural paints because they are eco-friendly, especially for the idol immersion or visarjan ritual. These idols are completely bio-degradable, leaving zero carbon footprints on the planet.
Nurturing India’s artisans
This demand for sustainable products has also brought the spotlight on India’s traditional craftsmen. “We also run an NGO that provides skills training to Maharashtra’s artisans,” shares Chavan of Nirvi Handicrafts. “Besides making traditional artefacts, we train them to use trendy designs. We also teach them to create and use eco-friendly material like natural paints,” he adds. For this festive season, over 400 local artisans from Kolhapur were at work.
Asha Agarwal’s Saheli team, on the other hand, are themselves part of Rajasthan’s artisan community. “We have different groups of craftsmen for different skillsets. Our community is spread across Jaipur and Rajasthan, creating various traditional handicrafts,” she says. This festive season, nearly 4,500 artisans have been behind the lovely handmade and eco-friendly home décor products displayed by Shri Handicrafts at the Amazon Saheli store.
Traditional earthen lamps or diyas and other handmade home décor products are also on display this season. Handmade product sellers on Amazon, such as Arvind Handicrafts, Nirvi Handicrafts, Shri Handicrafts and Kundan Handikrafts are offering a variety of festive lamps in the form of organic ghee diyas, terracotta, clay and other earthenware diyas. Also on offer are festive gift boxes, puja thalis, wall hangings, paintings and home décor pieces --- all handmade and earth friendly!
