Adventures of a Salesman in Art World – Part 2

Through this series ‘Adventures of a salesman in art world’, Mr Chandrashekhar Ojha, former DGM Marketing of Camlin continues to share his insightful memories. Throughout his career spread across four decades, he gathered a wealth of insights about the art world through his interactions with artists and art lovers. In this second part, he shares his experiences about ‘Art that is applied’ in the context of his institutional clients in Jodhpur.

Part 2 – Art That Is Applied

Jodhpur had sales of applied art products than those for fine art, my interaction with the commercial artists, cartographers and designers etc. played a huge role in my career. Those were the days when offset was still in nascent stage and only big publications were using it. All the other works were still dependent on letter press, which in turn were dependent on a lost breed called ‘Block Makers’. Essentially, commercial artists with Zinc plate exposure facility, which is used by printmakers today, were called the Block Makers. They were using Drawing Inks, brushes, and technical drawing instruments, as far as we were concerned.

There were many of them in Jodhpur, but Mr D N Joshi was the most prominent one. A graduate of the famous Lucknow School of Arts, Mr Joshi was one of the first to be touched by me. Our interaction centered around Camel Special Drawing Ink No. 99, and its rapid coagulation. After reading through the literature, I informed him that this is the very nature of carbon black to sediment as soon as it is still, and that is the reason the pack-copy instructs the users to ‘Shake well before use.’ He bought the point and tried, but shaking didn’t work.

However, we remained engaged on the topic and soon the Nail Polish entered our conversation, which used to come with some steel balls to stir the pigments & solvent together before applying it. Taking a cue from this, we also used some steel balls as stirring agents in the drawing ink bottle, and it solved the issue for good.  Encouraged, I sent a report on it, which got a better response than the earlier one. Though the R&D and production didn’t start putting stirring agents, Marketing changed the user instruction from ‘Shake well’ to ‘Stir well’ before use. When I met Vahini (Smt Rajani Subhash Dandekar) for the first time in Kanpur, she gave me a print of the revised copy in her own handwriting. No need to say that it is a part of my personal archive.

Jodhpur and the surrounding towns of Pali and Balotara had a thriving textile dyeing and printing industry, and there were several textile design houses too. These units used to consume poster colours to create designs, drawing inks to create B&W positives of the designs and white shade of poster colours in the process of exposing the silk screens. There were good sales of these products at prominent stationery outlets, but there were a few specialized outlets too.

The late eighties saw a spurt in the sales of poster white in and around Delhi and the investigations revealed that the same was being used as milk substitute in hot and cold beverages as well as ice creams and kulfi. This being an unethical use, Camlin wanted to discourage it, of course without harming the genuine sales, and hence decided to supply poster white in the same ratio as other shades. I don’t know how far it helped in checking the unscrupulous use, but it impacted my business badly. I wrote a report explaining the industrial consumption of this product and requested an exemption. It worked and later Vahini also visited the screen making unit to observe the application. One more reason for me to feel that though I was the last soldier standing alone but I am heard and attended to, if I try in the right earnest.

In those days all research departments, like ‘Botanical Survey of India, Zoological Survey of India, Central Arid Zone Research Institute (BSI, ZSI and CAZRI) also used to have artists and draftsmen in their team for visual documentation and making maps. They helped me in promoting products as well learn more about their work and expand my horizon. In BSI, my interaction with Dr Narendra Singh Rathore is a good example. He came from a family of passionate scientists who were equally passionate about art. Dr Rathore had won several awards in fabric painting contests conducted by Camlin in women’s magazines. His research was on Termite and what he told me about this hated insect was eye opening. I always tried to find out how their work is relevant for people like me, and that gave me lot of insight into the expectations of stakeholders which proved handy in my career later.

Cartographical units in CAZRI and State Remote Sensing Application Centre (SRSAC) were also good consumers for me. In those days we had a product called ‘Camligraph’ Pens, an Indian version of famous technical pen brand Rotering, which was very expensive. Hence, we got some traction, especially from the places with resource crunch. Once Mr Sumer Singh, a draughtsman with CAZRI, raised the issue of design fault in the product during the meeting and how Rotering is better. On my request he made proper drawings of both the pens explaining the issue and the remedy. My report was appreciated by the manufacturing team and the desired design corrections were made to improve the performance of the product.

CAZRI was a large Central Government research organization dedicated to developing sustainable flora and fauna for deserts. Once I had the opportunity to meet the Director of the centre, Dr Dheer and detail a product to him. It was an illuminated board and fluorescent marker combo called ‘Illumigraph’. I still laugh on myself when I recall that while explaining the product to a well-known scientist, who was heading such a premium institute, I had the audacity to explain how the lasers work. Thank God that he was kind enough to listen to me politely.

However, my first such consumer was Prof Bhandari, HOD Botany, University of Jodhpur, who had done lot of work on desert vegetation. We remained in touch forever and later his son, Mr Mukesh Bhandari, who was my senior tradesman and a passionate stationer and botanist, also became a good friend and still is.

(To be continued)

Chandrashekhar Ojha

In case you have not read the first part of this series, you can catch it up here.

Adventures of a Salesman in Art World – Part 1