Handicrafts

The Stone sculptures at Mathura village of Ganjam district are of high artistic and aesthetic value. The sculptors usually procure the gneiss which they call in tongue "Baula Mala Pathar" from the adjacent. Sri Maheswar Maharana aged 40 is busy at carving a Bull out of a huge block of guiness and a small Devi idol as well, at the roadside under a thatched roof with the slightest care to the spectators and passerby.

Another sculptor, one Sri Rama Chandra Maharana aged 30 is an architect of many such idols displayed at his poor and ravaged thatched cottage inside the village under a shed at roadside displaying the gruesome scenario of poverty laughing at their artistic and creative personality languishing and shrinking day by day.

Still then, these sculptors have proved their artistic talent as the worthy posterities of their celebrated forefathers the legacy of which they aspire to continue in their offspring, as the monopoly of their family heritage.

Equally important are the plastic sculptures in masks or different shapes, prepared by Sri Durjyadhan Behera and Mangu Behera out of very trivial intems like waste paper, tumurine seeds, cowdung, etc. and make them living and elegant by the touch of their brush and colour. They are the two brothers of the entire village Huma to become the absolute masters of this colourful plastic sculpture. Of similar importance, a sculptor of plastic arts is one Sri Murali Mahapatra, of Chikiti who is a master of both glptic and plastic sculpture. His versatile artistic talents are of wider range comprising the masks of different shapes.

The metal forms of the plastic sculptures are encountered in Buguda and Belguntha. Sri Adikanda Maharana at Mathura and Sri Hrukesha Maharana at Belaguntha are exert in brass and bell-metal sculpture. Their artistic range covers daily-use items, temple items, snakes, and utensils. One Sri Bhaskar Maharana at Belguntha is an expert artisan in preparing flexible fishes of different shapes and to his glory his items adorn the markets of Malaysia, America and London.

One Bronze sculpture of Raja SriKar Bhanja, inside the campus of Biranchi Narayan Temple at Buguda of recent origin, presents the best artistic talent of the local sculptors.

All these glyptic and plastic sculptures taken in totality place Ganjam at unique place in the sculptural galaxy of the world and attract the archaeologists from different parts.