Sandalwood is the fragrant heartwood of some of the species of genus Santalum of family Santalaceae and has been valued for centuries for its fragrance, woodworking and various medicinal qualities, perfume industry, and fairness remedies. Indian Sandalwood is very sacred in the Hindu Ayurveda and is known in Sanskrit as Chandana.
Indian Sandalwood Crafts
Sandalwood although having great religious importance and is an extremely expensive material for carving artifacts. Karnataka has a huge forest-belt and sandalwood carvers are found in Bangalore, Mysore, Shimoga, Sorab in the foothills of Sirsi, and Honavar and Kumta on the coast.
Karnataka State is richly endowed with widely practices sandalwood carvings, and transforming the fragrant woods into beautiful arts. The artisans of Karnataka are very elegant workers, they reside near the forest belts of Karnataka and make the accepted and acclaimed crafts since time immemorial.
The major crafts of these artists are sandalwood carvings, rosewood inlay, channapatna lacquer ware & toys, Mysore traditional paintings, bidri ware, kinhal toys, Navalgund durries, stone carvings, other wood carvings, traditional jewellery, mirror and embroidery, banana fiber, terracotta, bronze icons, Pile carpets and many more.
Not only in figurines but also this amazing wood is used for many other purposes. We can always see in our house, a sandalwood on the place of worship. Women have always been found of this wood, either it is for skin or its antiseptic medicinal values whatever be the cause. Today sandalwood crafts are not only limited to toys and idols, but have also tranformed into women accessories and not only women. We get to see its beads, bracelet, necklece, and many more such things.
There is a high demand for Indian Sandalwood because of its unique fragrance quality, its use in medicines, cosmetics, beauty aids & paradigmatic shift of the consumers towards the natural products. Not only in India this craze for the sandalwood beautiful crafts is also in foreign countries, they too like this great beneficial product.
