Mar 23 – Mansions, Tiles and Weavers

Breakfast this morning was outside on a covered terrace.  The hotel has beautiful grounds.

Mary tried the Indian Breakfast.  It was ok but not really her favorite.

We did a short tour of town including the another stop in front of the massive, well-tended mansion…

and the VVR House.

These are ovens. 

The roof was pretty amazing.  The tiles were made by shaping the clay over a man's thigh.  And the same man had do to all of these thousands of tiles because they needed to be the same size.  

A cow tried to come into the house while we were visiting.  

We then headed out into the countryside to our next sight to visit.  There were a few interesting things along the way. 

Goats grazing in a harvested field.

A band of monkeys.

In a nearby town we visited a truly palatial house.  

The home was 95 years old and has 63 rooms.  They used marble from Italy, iron from England, tiles from Japan (and local artisans), teak from Burma, and Belgian glass.  Nothing but the best.  Some of the columns were granite and others concrete. 

The "front porch".

Some of the tile work.

There were incredible open verandas/courtyards inside the buildings.  These helped with ventilation.

And this truly spectacular hall with surrounding balconies and an incredible, detailed ceiling. 

More details. 

The “ballroom” for large festivities like weddings. It wasn't as fancy as most of the rest of the house we saw.  But it was certainly quite large.  One could hold a very large party here. 

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More Athangudi Palace
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Next stop was the Sri Ganapathy Tiles operation.  The tile making is by hand.  This lady was mixing the colors.

A frame with the design is placed over glass and paints ladled into the wells of the design.  

A sand/concrete mix is then packed into the frame.  

The tiles are soaked in water for 5 days and then dried for another 5 days.  At the point the glass plate can be slid off the tile yielding a very smooth tile. 

The tile maker also made some free style tiles.  

And Mary tried her hand at it. 

Two tile makes can make up to 150 tiles a day. 

We also stopped at a very small weaving operation where the weaver also spun the wool skeins.  Apparently, they can no longer find people to do some of the other tasks so he does it all himself.

And, of course, we had to check out the shop.

We had lunch at the Bangala Hotel…

served on a banana leaf.