State to gift brass, silver filigree crafts to hockey players

BHUBANESWAR: Odisha will gift two forms of its handicrafts to the players during the FIH Men’s Hockey World Cup 2023. The  Odisha State Cooperative Handicrafts Corporation Ltd (Utkalika) is preparing brass and silver filigree mementoes which will be gifted to the players during the matches.

Officials of the corporation said around 400 hockey World Cup trophies are being prepared using brass as the base material by state handicraft awardees of the state for the purpose. These hockey trophy mementoes will be presented in velvet boxes. “Our craftspersons are working round-the-clock to finish the order of 400 brass trophies and these will be ready by January 13,” an official said, adding that the trophies will be ornamented ones for the added attraction.

Besides, Cuttack’s famed Tarakasi artisans have been roped in by the corporation to sculpt 50 pieces of Konark Sun temple wheels in pure silver.  Brass and bell craft in the state is practised in districts like Angul, Bargarh, Cuttack, Dhenkanal, Jajpur, Khurda and Nayagarh. Both the brass and silver filigree are among the state’s 51 approved crafts.

This year, though, there is no handloom product included in the list of gifts for hockey players. During the last hockey World Cup in 2018, the government had gifted exquisitely designed Ikat stoles and mementoes - small World Cup trophies made in dokra and silver filigree - in boxes decorated with lacquer craft.