Making puppets

As you can imagine making a puppet in leather is not an easy task. The hardest part is getting the detail straight (being me and generally a bit wonky this is especially difficult).

Pulavar started by teaching  me the simplist of the designs (all of which have symbolic reference i.e. the diamond means ambition). These are made by punching holes in the leather using a hammer and a shaped metal punch. The next step was to choose and prep the leather.

Tolpava is used to tell the Ramayana stories, and I chose to make sita as my first puppet. I was taught this part by Puluvar’s children -Rajeev and Rajitha who have both been making puppets all their lives.