Meet Coimbatore artisan who makes clay golu dolls

Discover the last few artisans crafting traditional clay golu dolls in Coimbatore, available in various sizes and designs.

Hundreds of golu dolls stand in neatly-arranged rows inside a godown at Selvapuram. At a corner, three men are busy packing a few in cartons lined with hay and old newspapers. S Saravana Kumar takes customers around, helping them choose dolls to their liking. This is the busiest time of the year for him and his team of 10 at Rajavalli Shanmugam Arts. The 55-year-old is among the last few artisans making clay golu dolls in the city, supplying to several small sellers in and around Coimbatore, apart from Poompuhar and Sarvodaya Sangh.

Saravana’s ancestors are from Puducherry. “My father moved to Coimbatore when he was 10 years old to learn to make clay dolls from a relative,” he says. Saravana’s crafts venture, named after his parents, was started in their 20x20 tile-roofed home in Selvapuram. “Appa would collect clay from the Perur tank for his work. He made dolls by hand, drying and firing them in a temporary kiln near our home and displayed them during the festive season,” he recalls, adding that they sold around 100 dolls during Navaratri.

Now Saravana makes 10,000 dolls a year, chiefly in clay, with a small percentage of them in paper mache. His team sets up a temporary kiln nearby where they fire the dolls.

During his father’s time, Saravana says there were around four artisans in Selvapuram, all of them from his extended family, making clay golu dolls. While there do exist artisans making dolls in paper mache — M Sankaralingam and his son S Jaisurya at Madhampatti village, 32 kilometres from Coimbatore are known for their variations with design ideas from Crafts Council of Tamil Nadu —  Saravana is among the last few who continue to work with clay.    

“This is because despite clay dolls being heavy and high-maintenance, people prefer them over their paper mache counterparts,” he says, adding that he makes the latter for people living abroad who prefer something light-weight to be transported by flight.

Saravana makes golu dolls through the year. “Work on the next batch begins in October, right after the Navaratri season,” he says. His team uses cement and Plaster-of-Paris moulds to shape the dolls, and from February onwards, when temperature rises, they start firing the dolls before painting them. While Saravana is involved in every step of the process, his key responsibility is drawing the eyes. “The doll’s finish depends on how perfect the eyes are, so I usually take over this task,” he explains. Saravana also makes Ganesha idols for Chaturthi; but the idols in this case are not fired since they are immersed in water later on.

He sells dolls ranging from three inches to those as tall as five feet, and has customers in and around the city, apart from Erode, Tiruppur, Thanjavur, and Ernakulam, and Thrissur in Kerala.