Introduction

This Gallery has three sections. The first section depicts the establishment of the workshop and its conversion to the Museum through visuals and some original objects. The second section displays the original objects related to the workshop and its activities, particularly the navigation equipments found in the workshop. The third section gives information on the Museum and its different Galleries through plan and photographs. It also has audio visual system screening short films on maritime heritage of Odisha.

SECTION-1 :: CONVERSION OF WORKSHOP INTO MUSEUM

Jobra was a suburb of Cuttack ,a green woody little village on the bank of the great river Mahanadi. Just above it the river was dammed by an anicut, a mighty wall of stone more than a mile in length, and at one end of it stood the great range of canal workshops, under the management of George Faulkner. A morning’s stroll through the long lines of workshops at Jobra was very interesting. The great Nasmith’s steam hammer would be made to beat a huge mass of red-hot iron or crack a nut; other machines shaved iron like so much soap or sawed big logs into planks in a few seconds. Then Faulkner would make the most beautiful ivory and ebony croquet mallets for the ladies or exhibits his portfolios of lovely designs his fretwork brackets and screens, stained-glass windows, deigns in plaster or stone a bewildering variety of beautiful things.

SECTION-2 :: TREASURES FOUND FROM THE WORKSHOP

Faulkner was a man of a type perhaps little known in England, but far from uncommon in India; the Englishman to whom India has become a second mother-country and who would be unhappy and totally misunderstood and out of place in England. George Faulkner was a tall, stout, powerfully-built man with a ruddy face, a huge shock of flaxen hair turning white, and an immense white beard which hung down over his broad chest and floated all round his face. He looked like an old lion, a grand, jovial coarse, hard-drinking old Viking, full of songs and jokes and highly improper stories .Utterly reckless and wild about money matters, always full of wild schemes and yet this rough old creature had the most exquisitely delicate taste as a designer and the greatest skill and fineness of touch as an artisan. He painted, he carved, he moulded; designed buildings, boats, bridges; he grew the most beautiful flowers, planned and laid out the loveliest gardens and he could use a chisel or any other tool as well as his best workman.

SECTION-3 :: INTRODUCTION TO MARITIME HERITAGE

Cannons were brought to Jobra Workshop for repair and sometimes to melt the damaged ones and used for other purposes. Both the Cannons date back to AD 1856 .

Introduction Photo Gallery