A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c16.s7.20

c16.s7.20

It is, indeed, strange that the craftsmen who are capable of producing such beautiful and artistic work seem to be half-unconscious of their power, and wholly devoid of ambition. Sir George Watt notes that the most delicate productions, the result of weeks of painstaking labour, are often ruined in a few months by the effects of careless joinery, and that the eight families of artisans engaged in the work at the principal centre in Mysore are ‘profligate, apathetic, indigent, and of intemperate habits’; firmly set against the slightest modification of their accustomed ways, and deaf to admonition.