Meet Madurai’s artisans who hand-engrave names and initials on steel utensils

The clang of stainless-steel utensils fills the air as Madurai’s Lakshmi Puram wakes up to yet another day. It is 10am and the wholesale and retail steel shops that stand on either side of the narrow road, open their shutters one by one. Workers go about dusting their wares while the owners light incense sticks and settle down at the counters. Away from the bustle, R Mayilvahanan is seated in front of a shop on the road, a small iron hammer and finger-sized chisel in hand. Head bent in concentration, he engraves the name Sri Muthu Priya on the base of a copper lamp with the chisel, as the hammer goes, ‘tick, tick, tick’.

K Arivazhagan, who works in front of Anitha Stores, can engrave motifs such as peacocks and flowers (Source: MOORTHY G)

“This is a present to my daughter for Karthigai Deepam,” says R Indrani, his customer, as she watches him work. The 62-year-old just purchased the lamp and was looking for an artisan to engrave a name on it by hand, when she spotted Mayilvahanan. “The steel shop can do this for free with a machine, but what they write is a mere scribble that will fade after being scrubbed a few times,” she says. “There is something special in getting it done by hand. This way, the name will last a lifetime.”