100-yr-old toys adorning royal palace restored

Vadodara: Exquisitely carved and century-old wooden toys that were inspired by celebrated painter Raja Ravi Varma’s lithographs have been restored to their original form.
The toys had caught the attention of Maharaja Sayajirao Gaekwad III when the visionary ruler of erstwhile Baroda state visited Sawantwadi in Maharashtra’s Sindhudurg district. Around 800 such toys made by a popular local artist VK Kapsekar were purchased by Gaekwad which are kept on display at the royal Ganesha pandal at the Laxmi Vilas Palace every year.
“These colourful Indian toys are based on the characters in Mahabharata and Ramayana, including Arjun, Bhima, Krishna, Lord Ram, Ravana, Kumbhakarna and gods like Brahma and Vishnu. Some are even inspired from Panchtantra folklore. While restoring these toys, I did some research and found that they were inspired from the lithographs made by Raja Ravi Varma. The intricately carved faces and the attire match exactly to Varma’s works,” said Chandrashekhar Patil, an art conservator and sculptor, who is restoring the toys.
“During his visit to Sawantwadi in the early 19thcentury, Sayajirao saw these stunning little toys and learnt that they were made by Kapsekar. He immediately met the artist and bought about 800 toys that were brought to Baroda state. These toys were kept as decorative pieces in the royal Ganesh pandal in 1922 for the first time and the tradition has continued since then,” said Patil, who regularly organizes exhibitions on the life of Maharaja Sayajirao.
Patil began restoring the 48 wooden toys that are in possession of the royal family in July. “It was tough restoring these toys that are nearly 100 years old. In some of the toys, hands were missing while in others the legs were broken or the colour had worn off. I had old photographs of these toys, so I could recreate the original work on these toys using the Burma teak powder,” Patil said.
He has already restored 40 of the toys that are currently on display in the royal pandal.
Royal Gaekwad family member, Radhikaraje Gaekwad, too recently mentioned these toys from Sawantwadi in her post on Instagram and said that the family is proud of this prized collection. While stating that among the palace art objects that are decorated all over the hall during Ganesh festival, most precious are these toys from the Sawantwadi collection.