Descent: A Terracotta and Cast-Stone Installation Series on the Vanishing Stepwells of India

Descent is an MFA Sculpture final display project with two parts, following the display-plus-dissertation pattern of Indian fine-arts faculties. The studio part is a cohesive series of eight works — six wall reliefs and two freestanding forms — in terracotta and cast stone, translated from the sculptural language of Indian stepwells: the descending tiers, the deep shadows of inverted space, the friezes of deities and dancers, and the still water at the bottom. The written part is a dissertation that reads stepwells as sculpture — subterranean 'inverted temples' — and explains how each work in the series was derived from a documented structure.

The series draws on field documentation of three recorded stepwells: Rani-ki-Vav at Patan, Gujarat (inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2014), the kalyanis of Lakkundi in Gadag district, Karnataka, and the octagonal Baramotichi Vihir at Limb, Satara district, Maharashtra. From measured sketches, photographs and relief studies, the project distils a vocabulary of form — step, landing, void, pillar, niche — and rebuilds it at gallery scale.

The final display places the works in a deliberate sequence of descent: the viewer enters at ground level and ends, like the well-digger, at the water line. An artist statement, printed labels, a process film and the dissertation complete the jury package.

India's stepwells are disappearing structures: silted up, de-watered, encroached upon, or known only through photographs. Art education, meanwhile, treats built heritage in one of two shallow ways — as a literal picture to be copied, or as a token mentioned in a theory course. There is little practice-based work that takes a heritage structure's spatial and sculptural logic — how it is organised, how it is experienced by a descending body — and rebuilds that logic in contemporary sculptural material. An MFA final project is the right vehicle for such a translation because it demands depth: sustained documentation of specific structures, a written argument, and a body of finished work that can stand before a jury. Without a framework, however, the result collapses into postcard imagery. This project therefore pairs a disciplined field-documentation method with a treatise-informed reading of stepwell form, so that the exhibition series is argued, not just felt — and the vanishing stepwell enters the gallery as an idea, not a souvenir.

Abstract

Stepwells — vav, baoli, bihir, kalyani — are among India's most sculptural buildings: entire inverted temples sunk below the water table, with storeys of carved panels descending to a pool. Many survive; many more are silted, abandoned or being quietly erased. This MFA Sculpture project studies three documented stepwells and translates their spatial and sculptural language into a cohesive exhibition series of eight works in terracotta and cast stone, supported by a dissertation, an artist statement and a designed final display.

Introduction

Victoria Lautman's The Vanishing Stepwells of India (Merrell, 2017) documents seventy-five of these structures and calls them a building type missing from architecture's canon. UNESCO's citation for Rani-ki-Vav describes an eleven-century monument built as an 'inverted temple' that highlights the sanctity of water — a seven-storey sculpture gallery descending roughly 28 metres. For a sculptor, the stepwell is not only a subject but a system of form: repetition of the step as module; ornament compressing toward the water; light narrowing as one descends; and the pool as a horizontal plane that mirrors everything above it.

Existing practice and the gap

Heritage institutions photograph, measure and conserve stepwells; art students usually borrow them as picturesque backdrops for literal depictions. What is missing in student practice — and what this project addresses — is a sustained formal translation: treating tier, void, shadow and frieze as a sculptural vocabulary that can be recomposed, not merely illustrated. The dissertation supplies the missing written framework, connecting the series to treatises such as the Mayamata on proportion and iconography, and to scholarship on the temple as form.

The proposed series

Eight works, made in two related materials: fired terracotta for relief panels (warm, clay-burnt, close to the brick and stone of the originals) and cast stone (cement and fine aggregate) for the two freestanding stepped cores. The sequence: a Threshold pair of entry-tier reliefs; a large Seven Storeys panel distilling Rani-ki-Vav's descent; The Inverted Temple, a stepped freestanding core shown with a floor reflection tray; and Kalyani and Vihir, regional variants from Lakkundi and Satara, ending in a low water-plane piece, Water Memory.

Feasibility

Terracotta and cement casting are low-cost, studio-scale processes available in any fine-arts department (wedged clay, an electric kiln, plaster for moulds). Field visits to Lakkundi and Satara are affordable by bus and rail; Rani-ki-Vav is reachable on a single budgeted trip. The 24-week schedule reserves the last four weeks for display, so delays in firing cannot sink the exhibition. Permissions for photography at protected monuments follow ASI norms, which allow personal, non-commercial photography.

In scope

• One MFA Sculpture candidate's final-year series: eight works at studio-display scale (reliefs up to 90 × 120 cm; freestanding cores up to 150 cm tall).
• Three documented study structures, visited once each, with photography, sketching and relief studies.
• Two materials: terracotta (electric-kiln fired) and cast stone (cement/fine-aggregate casts from plaster moulds).
• A written dissertation, an artist statement of 500–800 words, printed labels, a process film of 3–5 minutes, and a display plan for the department gallery.

Out of scope

• Bronze or metal casting (cost and foundry dependency) and monumental outdoor scale.
• Actual conservation, excavation or restoration of any stepwell — this project documents and interprets, it does not touch the structures.
• New archival research beyond published sources and site documentation.
• Interactive or digital projection elements; the display relies on material, light and sequence.

The project follows a practice-based research process — research → documentation → translation → production → display — run in parallel with dissertation writing, so that each stage of making generates a chapter of text.

flowchart LR
  A["Stage 1: Reading and permissions"] --> B["Stage 2: Field documentation"]
  B --> C["Stage 3: Vocabulary, drawings, maquettes"]
  C --> D["Stage 4: Moulds and test tiles"]
  D --> E["Stage 5: Series production"]
  E --> F["Stage 6: Firing, casting, finishing"]
  F --> G["Stage 7: Display design and installation"]
  G --> H["Stage 8: Dissertation, statement, jury"]

Craft discipline: every form passes through test tiles before production; every firing is logged (cone, ramp, soak); every cast is dated. Two formal crits with the guide and one peer crit punctuate production, and all crit notes go into the process document the jury reads.

Because this is a studio project, the 'architecture' section presents the study design and the display choreography — the two diagrams a jury can hold on to. The study design links sources, translation and outcome; the display plan choreographs the viewer's body through a sequence of descent, from entry statement to the water-plane piece at the exit.

flowchart TD
  SRC1["Rani-ki-Vav, Patan: seven storeys of sculpture panels"] --> VOC["Stepwell vocabulary: step, landing, void, pillar, niche, water plane"]
  SRC2["Lakkundi kalyanis, Gadag: Chalukya friezes"] --> VOC
  SRC3["Baramotichi Vihir, Satara: octagonal well chamber"] --> VOC
  VOC --> DRW["Drawings and clay maquettes"]
  DRW --> REL["Six terracotta wall reliefs"]
  DRW --> CORE["Two cast-stone stepped cores"]
  REL --> INST["Final display: choreography of descent"]
  CORE --> INST
  INST --> JURY["Dissertation, artist statement, process film, portfolio"]

flowchart TD
  E["Entrance: artist statement and site map"] --> W1["Wall 1: Threshold reliefs"]
  W1 --> W2["Wall 2: Seven Storeys panel"]
  W2 --> C["Centre: The Inverted Temple, stepped core with reflection tray"]
  C --> W3["Wall 3: Kalyani and Vihir reliefs"]
  W3 --> P["Exit: Water Memory, low water-plane piece"]
  P --> X["Table: dissertation copy, portfolio, process film screen"]

The reflection tray under the central core is the conceptual hinge: it restates the stepwell's defining experience — form doubled in water — inside a white-cube gallery, and it is the piece examiners usually return to in the viva.

• A second-material series — bronze or cast-aluminium versions of the two cores, through a foundry collaboration, to test the vocabulary in permanent material.
• Site-sited iterations — small relief editions donated to museums or interpretation centres at the source towns, returning the work to the stepwell's locality.
• A sound dimension — hydrophone recordings of well water as a low loop in the display, deepening the descent.
• Community workshops — relief-making workshops with school groups in Lakkundi or Satara, extending the project into art education.
• A publication — the dissertation expanded with full documentation into a small book or department journal article on stepwell form for sculptors.