Punch Transfer Technique

In an old book about Indian miniatures I came across this ancient method of transferring an image...and I found it fascinating. It's a stencil of sorts, but would be fun to do with kids since it doesn't involve complicated positives and negatives, rather it's a fairly straightforward way of copying images, with no limitations on how complex the original image is.
The act of copying things has become such a non-issue for kids growing up surrounded by xerox machines and in-home color printers and copiers that I think it's fun to point out that it wasn't always this simple. Entire art forms have been invented for the purpose of making copies. I have alway enjoyed teaching children rudimentary ways of copying images, from covering the back of a page with graphite or pencil lead and then tracing over the image to on front (homemade carbon paper), to actual carbon paper--stacks and stacks of it for multiple images, and, of course, printmaking. But this punch transfer is new to me.
Offer kids a darning needle, toothpick, or drypoint tool and challenge them to punch holes along the important lines of a drawing or a photograph. With a new piece of paper underneath, use a bit of ground up charcoal, colored pastel, or tempera powder and rub gently on top of the image, making sure it doesn't move until entire image is covered. Then connect the dots on the paper underneath. It could be fun to make multiple copies, overlap images, even thread a needle and make stitches in the original punched paper. Many of the shapes in the original could probably be punched out and used for collage. This could be a fun one-off project for exploring and experimentation in between projects, or it could turn into something bigger. I always enjoy being honest with the kids when I'm trying something new, and encourage everyone to jump in and brainstorm about possibilities.

Maru Potters of Rajasthan

The Maru potters did not believe, as some cultures did, that deities reside in stone but rather in clay because of the nature of its elements. They believe a pot is like a person in that there is a birth and a death (the inevitable break), and that a broken pot will eventually return to nature, as people do. Likewise, they believed that a good potter perspires when he kneads wet clay which means potter and clay permeate each other and become one. The clay becomes infused with the potter, the potter takes on elements from the clay as well. In some villages the potters are also priests, taking the respect for this profession and its proximity to the life and death cycle to another level entirely.

This is not an art lesson idea as much as an invitation to rethink how clay is presented. In every clay program children are taught to pound and work the clay in a rough manner in order to prevent air bubbles which could cause items to explode in the kiln. The kneading is billed as being necessary in order to prevent something bad from happening, not as something beneficial in its own right. I think it would be a great visual for clay-workers of any age to have when conditioning their own clay--imagining that the true goal is to become 'one with the clay' through the hard work of kneading and pounding. In fact, now that I know this reason for wanting sweat to mingle with clay, it seems like a wasted opportunity if a potter's only goal is such a mechanical one.
Here he is in action, mixing lots of sand into the clay, as well as mica. The clay is fired in a outdoor kiln at about 650*F.