The Silpakars, yesterday's Silakars, have been living in the Kathmandu Valley for hundreds of years. For many years, their home city has been known as Lalitpur, or the City of Fine Arts, and their creations played an important part helping the city earn this reputation. The members of the Silpakar family have always been proud and skilful crafts people, and the Kathmandu Valley has been a good home to them.

The Valley has been settled for more than two thousand years. It has given farmers rich crops, and its position between India and Tibet has brought business to its doors. The kings of the Valley, most of whom had well-stocked treasuries, always encouraged and supported the arts. In particular, the period that began with the Lichhavi rulers in the 4th century and ended with the Malla dynasty in the 18th century, saw the arts of the Newari people - metal crafting, stone sculpting and woodcarving - become so fine that today the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has designated seven places in the Kathmandu Valley as world heritage sites.

Like most of the arts in other parts of Asia, Kathmandu's crafts have been inspired by religion. The culture of Kathmandu, within which Hindu, Buddhist, animistic and tantric teachings have been brought together, has given the artist the widest imagery to work with. Today, the great skill of its people may be seen in centuries old statues, temples, water taps and resting places in almost every street. It is said the palace squares of the three old kingdoms of Patan, Bhaktapur and Kathmandu have some of the finest wood and metalwork in the world, while even a modern market area like New Road has shrines as reminders of the past times.

During the development of Kathmandu Valley craftsman, nature too has been kind and supportive. Neither summer nor winter in the Valley are severe. The monsoon leaves much of its rain in the south and is almost gentle by the time it reaches the Valley. There are no volcanoes, and the Himalaya are not close enough to cause danger from avalanches. But the Silpakar family remembers one time when nature has been treacherous.

"I still recall the days of 1934 when the earth shook and would not stay still. That year many temples and houses were brought down to the ground. Soon after, a great deal of building began. Every person was busy for many months to put right the damage that was caused. I must have been sixteen or seventeen then. Six of the struts of Kumbeswor Mahadev Temple in Patan were carved in our courtyard. I am seventy-three years old now."

When the Malla era ended in 1768 with the victory of the Shah kings, so did the golden time of craftsmen. In 1846, the Rana family usurped power of the Shah regime, established an oligarchy and began an altogether different style of building.

"We did not construct new temples in our time. The ones that you see today were built when kings reserved fabulous amounts of their treasury especially for the gods. When I was young, our leaders were busy erecting huge palaces in the European fashion and these palaces left hardly any room for our kind of craft-style. So our work was to resurrect damaged temples and make wooden picture-frames. The Rana family bought our frames and the demand for them was high because many of them were presented to rulers abroad. The local people could not afford to buy these frames even though the bigger businessmen would buy a piece sometimes. Today my children and grandchildren still make picture frames as their demand is still the highest. But the picture frames which they make cannot be worked as finely because the daar wood on which the smallest detail can be perfected is no longer available."

His son continues the story, "I have grandchildren myself. Most of my children and grandchildren like the work we do and want to be wood-carvers when they grow up. Some in the younger generation in other families are not satisfied with the work of their ancestors, but our family is a little different, perhaps because I and my father take pride in our craftsmanship. We certainly don't think that the work we are doing is not good enough for our children. Even though we may never be able to make huge constructions like our ancestors did, our work is good nonetheless. Because of that, we do not feel that if our children become doctors or engineers it will bring us more prestige, and our children do not grow up thinking that our work is shaming."

Most of the carvings made by the Silpakars today are still made using primitive tools similar to the ones that their forefathers used. Although there are many changes taking place in the Kathmandu Valley, the Silpakars have not lost the heritage their Silakar ancestors handed down.

"The temple of our ancestral god is run by our twenty-two member clan organization. The temple is opened every morning for worship, and the Buddha is presented with a flame in the evening. It is hard for someone who does not know our paths to easily discover our homes as we live in maze of streets and courtyards, yet the art-thiefs have been to our temple. They have stolen our gods, and we built a grill about the stupa in our courtyard because someone tried to remove it one night. This stupa belonged to the tales even when my father was young, and there is an inscription at the bottom of the stupa which puts its date back 335 years. We are very sure that it was made by a Silakar."

The stone carvings of Silakars and the woodcarvings of Silpakars decorate major temples and constructions in the old Patan city. The Silakars were a highly respected people in their field of work and the memory of their greatness is still remembered among important family lines. "When the Golden Temple was vandalized twenty years ago and the main gate had to be repaired, the authorities came to us for advice; even today, we are still known because of our forefathers." For their courtyard, the Silakars made many beautiful things and on the worn-out stones at the rim of the well in their courtyard, there are serpent deities that have almost been erased through many decades of touch. The well is still kept clean and the Silpakars do not throw filth into it. Its water is used to clean and to wash. But it is undrinkable because the water has become yellow and foul tasting - possibly the source is drying up.

The Silakars have evolved to Silpakars, their work for the gods has changed from making picture frames to commercial work. Their way of life is different; instead of weighing the value and goodness of stone, they specialize in the hues, smells and kinds of wood. Today they make small replicas of great temples of the Kathmandu Valley, their picture frames have diminished to souvenirs, and the images of gods that they carve are meant more for coffee tables than for temples. However, from time to time, they create better larger pieces of art that reminds them of their great capabilities.

"Our wood-carving business is good. Shopkeepers come to us with their orders. We do not have our own shop but many shopkeepers know us and come to us when they need to have something made."

The elders and finely trained members of the family work on many other things besides wood. They work rhino horn and ivory that their grandfathers purchased a long time ago, a time when hunting was the sport of kings. They take pictures of every major achievement and add it to their already thick photo collection.

"We like working with valuable things and coaxing them into images of our gods. We paint ivory pieces before taking photographs because ivory is so white that the details cannot be seen otherwise. Many claimed ivory work sold in the market are not real ivory. Some are made of elephant hip-bones and some are even made of buffalo bones. But to the buyer any polished bone looks like any other polished bone. Every claimed rhino horn art-piece in the market is not genuine either. Bamboo can be spliced and dyed to look like rhino horn. Rhino horn is dark and heavily marked. A piece of bamboo can look just like that if processed properly (and some people specialize in the work). Buffalo horns can be made to look like rhino born too."

In 1953, Harsananda Silpakar was awarded a Certificate of Merit by late King Tribhuvan Bir Bikram Shah Dev, and the younger members of the Silpakar family aspire to do even more. A child of the family, barely able to tell the difference between a doctor and an engineer, wants to grow up to become a woodcarver, "because I like the smell of wood and the glint of the sun against the sharp edges of my father's tools."