It was in good old days too, when one can actually make space for Vadodara’s iconic places in their homes ! Monuments like Palace Gate, Nyay Mandir, Mandvi gate etc. can be taken home or can be gifted, as all these are available as medals, mementoes or in metal form as shields.
Pawaskar family has been converting monuments into metal at their shop in Dandia Bazaar. The family has long association with Baroda. Annaji Pawaskar, (who is grandfather of Rajan Pawaskar) was spotted by Maharaja Sayajirao Gaekwad III and his ADC (aide-de-camp aka Personal Assistant) V. T. Krishnamachari at the J J School of Art, Mumbai. Maharaja immediately sent him invitation to come & settle down in Baroda. So did the Pawaskar, who actually hailed from pawas-ratnagiri & settled in city in 1910 at dandia bazaar area. Annaji became royal engraver while his brother Ramakant Pawaskar became the royal State Photographer. It is the first shop in the city to make metal engravings.
Almost all medals displayed at Shree Jummadada Vyayam Mandir have been made by Pawaskar’s. The teenyson’s team which had visited Baroda during early 20th century was highly impressed by the engravings. One of the most interesting medal that Pawaskar’s have made & is in their collection, unravels Baroda State’s secret association with Indian revolutionaries of freedom movement. It is the medal presented by Maharaja Sayajirao Gaekwad III to the ‘Jut Babu’ Bipin Chandra Pal, for his genuine patriotism. It has figure of Pal’s engraved on it, surrounded by revolutionaries like Lala Lajpatrai, G Subramnay Iyer, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Aurobindo Ghose & G S Khaparde.
The Pawaskars have also retained hand-embossed mementoes in their shop — things that their grandfather made painstakingly and preserved them very well. The brothers remember how they had made machine-embossed mementoes of the Vadodara Stock Exchange even before the building was constructed. The shop is known to almost all sports enthusiasts in the city as well as schools and corporates — a shop that sells landmarks of the city in metal so that people can remember it for all times to come.
via Times of India
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