Trip to Kanyakumari: Chapter 2: Government Museum, Kanyakumari: Part 3

14th November 2008, 06:49 pm

Different items in the museum:

Kumari Kandam: Kumari Kandam is the name of a legendary sunken landmass said to have been located to the south of present-day Kanyakumari District at the southern tip of India in the Indian Ocean. The legend assigns the continent and its final submergence an antiquity ranging in tens of thousands of years.

Kumari Kandam

Terracotta: Toys made out of clay and burnt is called terracotta. In Tamil Nadu the village deities and the horse head figures are the note worthy Terracottas. Things like telephone stand, horse head, utensils, swan, and Pavai made by the artists are exhibited here.

Terracotta

Old Photographs

Wood carvings: All works of art are expressed through different media and wood carving being a decorative art is one among them. The antiquity of wood carving has a hoary past. Being a perishable material, specimens of wood carvings have not survived. From the existing monuments it is clear that the wood was widely used in the temple architecture and sculpture. During the festivals for preparing the vahanas wood was used in large numbers and since the temple cars are the most important of them, the artisans paid great attention to embellish them with their skill. Rare examples of iconographic aspects are found in wood, which have not been met with either in stone or in metal. Some of the wood carvings on display here are the ones dismantled from the temple cars from Chengalpattu, Thanjavur and Ramanathapuram districts.