Gombe Atta - Agalkote, Karnataka
Fabricating a puppet has three steps namely carving, painting and dressing with ornaments. Puppetry carving is usually made by two methods, one with wood carving and other with mold. Wood usually preferred for the making of Shalake Gombe is Teak wood or Bana wood as it is soft in nature due to this, there is less chance of developing cracks. Generally hands and face of the puppets (Shalake Gombe) are carved on the teak wood and body carved on the Boorgada’s wood (locally called). Wood piece of 4X4 inches is divided into three sections equally, which is further divided into forehead, eyes, nose, lips and chin. Usually to create the facial features like lips, eyebrow and nose, mixture of raw/saw dust and adhesive is used. For small face puppets like servant, molding technique is used which acts as mask. Mixture of raw/saw dust and adhesive is filled in the mold with a plastic film as an ejector. Face from pop mold is dried in the diffused sunlight and the mask is attached with adhesive and raw dust to the (teak) wood cylinder. Gaps between the mask and cylinder are filled by raw/saw dust to even the surface.
Initially head is fixed to the middle (body), and then the three parts are attached to each other to form a hand and tightly attached to the wooden cylinder. For each character male or female are changed by altering the size of facial features like forehead, nose and cheeks, body parts like head and hands are attached using ropes and knotted to the main body for better control. Soft cushion (ring made of cloth) is added in elbow and shoulder area that acts like intervertebral disc in spinal cord. Painting is the next process after carving. Natural colors extracted from vegetables, trees and seeds were used earlier and oil based paints are used in current. Skin color and black color are used as a base paint (for body and hair) and cloth is dressed followed by ornaments. Female characters like queen are dressed with 6 meter silk saree suiting to the scene and show. Jewelries like maangtika, nose-ring, mangalsutra, necklace, kasina-sara, earring, armlets, bangles, waist-band, toe-ring and kuchu-jade are some of the ornaments for preferred. Head and hand are attached to thorax using ropes and knotted by balancing to manipulate using 2 rods (for hands) and 3 strings (for head) for each character.
