🇬🇧 Pandal design- second part

This is a continuation of my last post, so if it might be good to read Thursday’s post for a little bit of context. ( also I know I said this would be published on Friday but what with all the finding links to ressources and the translation, this took me far longer than expected!)

As I stated in my last post, the inside of the pandal would take the form of a series of tableaus recounting scenes from the book, beginning, as you will have read on Thursday, with the white rabbit‘s tunnel.

The Backdrop

The background of the pandal will remain more or less consistent throughout, with only certain details changing to better match each scene. My idea is to decorate the walls of the domed interior with wooden pillars forming arches on the wall. These pillars would branch outwards as they reach the ceilling, revealing themselves to be trees, and the ceiling would be painted like a sky.

The wall behind each pillar would be painted with a background that suits the scene in front. For example, behind the caterpillar there would be a forest of mushrooms, for the mad hatter’s tea party, that background could be a woodland scene. Instead of a the somewhat brutal rupture between the scenes in this sketch, they would merge into each other as the viewer walked along them. For a better idea of how this might look, I recommend looking at Carmontelle’s 18th century Transparent paintings (pictured below). These long strips of paper (over 100ft) where painted landscapes- representing shifting times of day, locations and seasons, which the artist would slowly unfurl while telling stories. You can read more about them in this article and watch a video of them unfurling here

It is this smooth shift between landscapes that I envision for the background of the pandal. This is a very rough sketch of how the interior might look, so to better illustrate it, here is my other main inspiration for this wall;

As is obvious, the nursery wall in Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away (possibly my favourite film in existence) is where I got the idea for merging outdoor scenes with indoor architecture.

The design for the arched trees was inspired by the forest in the film The Secret of Kells (below).

Like everything else, the trees would be made from bamboo frames coated in paper maché and would echo the design of the tree on the front of the pandal.

The Caucus Race

As the background changes, so would the scenes in front of them; I selected a few of my favourite scenes from the book which would be placed around the pandal in the order matching the order of events as they happen in the book.

Upon entering, the pandal, the viewer would be met by a recreation of the caucus race, illustrated here by Emily Carew Woodard. You can see the rest of her Alice illustrations here. In this scene, Alice participates in a race with various creatures including as you can see here, a dodo, a mouse, several fish, a lobster, and a duck. There are also several other birds including an egret and a lory. Tennial‘s illustrations (below) also include a monkey, a beaver, crabs and an owl among others.

As with all the other elements of decoration in this pandal, the animals would be made from a combination of bamboo and paper maché. The various animals would be arranged running in a circle, slightly elevated so as to be more easily visible by the viewer.

I have decided not to include Alice in any of the tableaus, as my idea is that the viewer should feel that they themselves are Alice walking through Wonderland.

As this scene takes place on a beach of sorts, the backdrop would be painted as such, and maybe the ground in front could also be coated with sand.

The Blue Caterpillar

The next scene would be that of the blue caterpillar. As you can see in the sketch, the caterpillar would sit on mushrooms taller than the viewer, and would be smoking a hookah pipe. I like the idea of having real smoke machines here to make the experience more immersive, however I’m not sure how feasible this would be as it would be difficult to contain the smoke to just this are.

I think the colours of bioluminescent mushrooms would be appropriate (achievable with glow-in-the-dark paints under a blue light), however this would mean having each section of the pandal differently lit. As I said in my last post though, I am ignoring technicallities, and so for now the caterpillar smokes and the mushrooms glow.

The background of this part of the pandal would be an oversized garden, with massive blades of grass, flowers and the odd mushroom towering over the viewer. Between this and the next scene, Alice regains her usual height, so the flora would shrink as the viewer walked on and shift into a woodland scene in preparation for the next tableau.

The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party

Next would be the mad hatter’s tea party. For this I was inspired by the V&A museum’s 2021 Curioser and Curioser exhibition. In this exhibition there was an installation of a large table set for tea. The colours and designs of the table cloth were constantly shifting and changing, controlled by a projector over head. This is a photograph I took when I was there, but you can see more on their official site.

For my design, the crockery would be a jumbled heap of mismatched, mutlicoloured cups and saucers, piled high and stacked at precarious angles, similar a more colourful version of this illustration by french artist Benjamin Lacombe:

The crockery would all most likely be real, being either sourced cheaply in a market, or from donated pieces, that qre chipped and no longer needed, as this would be easier, less time consuming, and potentially cheaper than making them from cardboard. There would be one handmade teapot however, larger than the others, which would host the sleepy dormouse. As for the table cloth, I thought a black and whited checked one would look good: the black and white regularity would contrast the chaos of the teacups on top, as well as being a reference to theme of chess in Alice Through the Looking Glass.

Seated around the table would of course be the March hare and the Hatter himself. The image of the left is a sketch of my own design for the character that I did a few years ago. Although it would be easier to make a realistic face from straw and clay in Kumartuli, the holy aspect of the clay means that this process is strictly reserved to idols and religious figures. Thus, the mad hatter would be made from the same materials as the rest (paper maché and bamboo) or potentially from a plaster mold. I would like his clothes, especially the stack of hats, to be real fabric.

Finally, as the Cheshire Cat is the one to guide Alice to this tea party, I thought I would include him in the scene, potentially painted up a tree in the background.

Rose Bushes & Croquet

I thought I would try to combine these next two scenes into one tableau: the queen’s guards painting her white roses red and the croquet match.

For both of these scenes, the background would be a very perfectly manicured garden full of rose bushes and hedges shaped like hearts (imagine if Versailles were designed by a psychotic five year old).

On the left is my design for the queen’s guards. It’s a very simple design, and I think it would be pretty easy to make in real life- the card could be made with wood or cardboard and painted to look like a card, and the head, arms and legs be made with paper maché and wire. I would also like them to be quite tall, maybe 6ft or more.

For the roses themselves, I like the idea of them having faces as a reference to the talking flowers in Through The Looking Glass.

As for the croquet, I thought about having a whole cast of characters, but in the end decided to just have the queen herself, poised mid-action with her flamingo and the poor hedgehog rolling towards the rose bush. I thought there should also be a few hedgehogs hiding underneath the rosebush, and a couple of flamingos standing around. I realise that this paragraph is incomprehensible to anyone who isn’t familiar with the story, so in short- the Queen of Hearts plays croquet using flamingos as mallets and hedgehogs as balls. Here’s one of the original Tenial illustrations of Alice attempting to play with an uncooperative flamingo.

Here is my design for the Queen of Hearts. I think that she may be the most technically complicated to make as I want her standing unsupported in a dynamic posture which may be tricky to achieve. I would also want her wearing the hat (bottom right) which, though I believe it’s construction would be simple enough, would add quite a lot of weight to her head.

If she were positioned like the image on the right though (from the 1951 Disney film), the weight of the skirt and the support of the flamingo would be enough to make her stable, though I would have preferred her mid action, mallet mid swing like a golfer.

The trial

The final scene I would like to include would be the courtroom, where Alice attends a trial for stealing some jam tarts. For this scene, the king and queen of hearts would be seated behind a judges bench on heart shaped thrones like in the image on the left (An illustration by Margaret W Tarrant). Instead of her croquet hat, the queen would be wearing the crown pictured below.

Besides them would be the White Rabbit in his squire outfit, reading from a long scroll in one hand and a trumpet in the other, as in the book. All three of the characters would be on a slightly elevated platform, and crowded around them would be all the characters the viewer will have previously seen; the guards, the hatter, the hare and the dormouse, the animals from the caucus race. Even a little blue caterpillar, perhaps on the judge’s desk. I’d like there also to be a plate of heart-shaped jam tarts on a small table in front of them.

Finally, I think that the Queen of Hearts should be in her iconic “Off with its her head!“ pose, pointing towards the exit of the pandal.

The background of this part of the pandal would be painted like the wall of a very grand court-room, with elaborate panels using, of course, heart motifs and perhaps a some red curtains framing the room. As I want all the backgrounds to be painted, a trompe l’œil technique would be used here to give the illusion of three dimensional elements. To illustrate what I mean, here is an image of Michel Nadaï‘s work. He paints on canvas, but the effect would be the same when painted on the wall.

The Exit

As the viewer will have followed Alice’s journey, I think it should remain the case until the very end, with the exit being another tunnel, this time shorter and made from playing cards. This is a reference to the end of the book when Alice essentially gets attacked by the pack of playing cards before waking up. On the right is Arthur Rackham‘s 1907 illustration of the scene. You can see the rest of his wonderful illustrations and read about his impact on illustration as an art form in this fascinating article.

For the playing card tunnel, I was once again inspired by the V&A exhibition I previously mentioned, specifically the part pictured on the left. I would like this part of the pandal to have a similar ‘explosion‘ of playing cards around the tunnel.

The Idol

Although I have focused mainly on the artistic aspects of this pandal, it must be remembered that being a pandal constructed for the Durga Puja, it is before anything else a religious festival, and thus the design of a pandal would be incomplete without the inclusion of the images of Durga, the demon and her children.

And though it is not at all uncommon for pandal artists and idol makers to take a light hearted, humourous approach to the goddess, I did not feel very comfortable designing such an important religious figure, so here are few pictures I took of this year’s Durga Puja to show how the idol could be stylised differently.

Of these, the first one I think is my favourite, (the pandal was on the theme of Van Gogh‘s Starry Night and was absolutely beautiful, you can get a better idea of how the whole thing looked from this video) but I think that maybe an idol more similar to the style of the third one would be most fitting with the rest of the pandal.

Perhaps to make her better fit the theme, she could be dressed in a blue and white saree as a reference to Alice’s iconic outfit. To avoid similarities to the uniform of the sisters of charity (a white saree with a dark blue strip) or with the local government who’s colours are also a dark blue and white, the saree could be a much lighter blue and perhaps be checkered instead of striped. The checkered pattern would also be a reference to the chess board motif we often find in Alice adaptations.

As for her children, I thought that they could perhaps each represent one of the four suits found in a common playing card set - hearts, clubs, diamonds and spades - which could be shown through motifs on their clothing.

I liked the idea of the lion perhaps having some reference to the Cheshire Cat, perhaps making him stripy like the cat. A Cheshire grin might also be fun, but again, the lion is an important part of the myth, and I do not know how much change one could make without it being offensive.