ARCHITECTURE: THE ART OF MUD.

Jabbo, a tiny hamlet just outside of cosmopolitan Lahore is now merely a relic of an aesthetic that once was. Today, steel girdled roofs and semi-concrete houses stand in place of the mud houses that have been typical of any Punjabi rural settlement.

Flash floods and the human instinct to make habitat 'everlasting' may both have contributed to this development. The tragedy is that, in achieving development and preserving obdurately for posterity, what has become lost is the mud artwork that Jabbo's women carved on their little houses.

Many women in Jabbo have historically come together to decorate their houses, creating a repository of imaginative designs for their upcoming generations. This includes but is not limited to cleverly contoured arches supported by pillars fashioned from clay pitchers, courtyard walls catching sunbeams through latticed windows, wall niches offset by a trellis pattern, entire walls sporting frilled shelving and that one outstanding single floral or geometric motif proudly ornamenting an otherwise nondescript elevation.

If time and finances allow, a splash of colour - mostly blue or green - is added. Or, as seen in Sindh, the glisten of tiny shreds of glass are used to light up a motif. The tiny, subtler additions have been personal innovations but, primarily, mud and thatch dominate the visual palettes.

Village women in pockets across Pakistan create mud filigree art as ornamentation for their mud houses. But while the worth of their craft is often dismissed by men, this indigenous art may also be under threat from a rapidly changing society

But not everyone appreciates this form of art.

The men of the village view mud art with disdain. Noor Muhammad, a resident of Jabbo, tells Eos, 'It is our womenfolk who have been doing all this.' He clarifies that no man would 'stoop' to 'play with mud.'

Many men in Jabbo share Muhammad's patriarchal disdain towards mud art, dismissing the artistic worth of an activity that brings their mothers, wives, sisters and daughters together.

Muhammad insists that the women in his clan and those of so many other men in the rural hinterlands of Pakistan continue to 'play with mud', and that it is bereft of any intrinsic 'value'.

But studying the details of this form of art that relies on limited mediums at hand, suggests that the women of Jabbo break monotony by using daily objects to channel their creativity.

Village girls who grow up making mud pies for play become master artisans...