If you visit the historic village of Nandi’s Sultanate at the foothills of Nandi Hills, you’ll encounter the local Kumbaru cooperative society, busy crafting clay tandoor ovens for commercial use. Pottery is one of the oldest human inventions dating back to before the Neolithic period.

The tandoor oven, known for its unique design, features a wide cylindrical body and a tapering neck. The artisans source high-quality clay from nearby lakes, which is stored in their raw material yard. According to demand, the clay is meticulously cleaned to remove stones and impurities using traditional methods that require no electricity—making the process both eco-friendly and sustainable.

In their workshop, the Kumbaru artisans shape the clay using a traditional wooden pottery wheel, manually spun to form the perfect cylindrical structure of the tandoor oven. Once shaped, the tandoors are left to dry naturally for about a week. After drying, they are fired in a kiln(Bhatti), fuelled by wood sourced from dead vineyard material from the nearby vineyards, for one day to harden the clay.

To enhance the oven’s durability, the clay tandoor is encased in a steel drum, with insulation material like glass wool or rock wool placed between the clay and the drum. This insulation ensures that the oven retains heat efficiently, allowing the hot clay walls to bake bread and cook other foods like meat, vegetables, and mushrooms.

With the increasing demand for traditional clay tandoors in restaurants from urban to rural areas, the Kumbaru community has seen their craft thrive. The government could further support these efforts by promoting this type of traditional, eco-friendly industry, helping to preserve a craft that has deep historical and cultural roots.

Shiva is an avid field explorer of history and the environment and is Project Field Researcher at FAIR.