Living in a 125 year old property , home to five generations of the family, can get surreal at times .
Because every scrap , stick and stone is older than you and has a long story to share .
Recently , my brother , with plans to redesign the garden , removed the terracotta tiles a pathway was
cobbled with . Since they were perfectly good tiles he washed and put them in storage for later use .
That is when he noticed the words on the reverse : “Basel Mission Tile Works Ferok " .
None of the words rang any bells . But he smelt History!
Our ancestral home , in Mysore, was a vintage bungalow with many wings, subsidiary units and a huge garden with a tennis court . The architecture was typical of the times : open verandahs , tall pillars, high ceilinged rooms , monkeytopped dravidian roof and flooring of reddish brown terracotta tiles .
Dating from the first decade of the 20th Century , it has undergone periodic structural changes to suit the needs of the times.
The mainhouse was remodeled in late 1960s .
The Urban Ceiling Act of 1976 trimmed the original area , dematerialising the outhouse , a storage shed ,the cow barn and half the sprawling garden .
35 years ago, the last remaining annexe was pulled down, making way for an independent unit.
Through all these changes , many things have lingered on , saved or repurposed .
This lastmentioned annexe , by virtue of having been built a few years later than the main house , was
called “Puthu Veedu”and “Hosmaney” ( = New House )right upto its end .
Its doors, windows and dressed stones were all re-used in the new unit built in its place.
The terracotta floor tiles that could be salvaged in good condition were used for paving the garden
paths . There they blended gracefully with the soil , aging well , but staying fit .
These were the tiles that Brother pulled out while remodeling the garden .
The tiles gave us a name - “Basel Mission” - and compelled us to seek their hidden story .
Willingly , we dived into the great pools of information scattered in The Cloud to fish for snippets that could be sewn together as a backdrop for The Tile , a sample that now rests among the Family Memorabilia, while others will be re-used .
Here is that patchwork quilt of history that emerged from our quest .
BASEL MISSION
The Basel Evangelical Missionary Society, headquartered in Basel , Switzerland, was formed in 1815 by a group of German and Swiss religious men , as thanksgiving for Basel City being saved from Napoleon’s raid . “Basel Mission” for short , the Seminary trained Dutch and British missionaries to be sent to far flung places like Russia, Gold Coast , China , Cameroon, Borneo, Nigeria ,Latin America and Sudan on evangelical duty .
India could not be left out , of course .
The Mission sent its first three missionaries to India in 1834. They landed in Mangalore where they
learnt Kannada and Tulu and established a Kannada school (1836. ) Soon , with more missionaries , the Mission on the Kanara Coast expanded steadily.
Though the aim was evangelism , Basel Mission focused also on creating employment opportunities for local people in areas like printing, carpentry , brick making , weaving , horticulture etc . In order to train them in the necessary skills , the Mission inducted professionals from Europe regularly. Many
workshops and cottage industries were thus set up in and around Mangalore .
People who were part of this early phase of Basel Mission here have left lasting legacies , three of which merit mention .
Hermann Friedrich Mögling ,in charge of Basel Mission’s Printing Press ( estd. 1841) earned a Doctorate in Kannada , wrote and translated Kannada works and published the first ever Kannada newspaper Mangalooru Samachara in 1843. He is acknowledged as a pioneer in the world of Modern Kannada Literature.
The Mission Press also printed the English-Kannada dictionary of Rev Ferdinand Kittel, along with
Malayalam and Tulu dictionaries and grammar books.
The colour KHAKI , which was adopted by the British as the colour for the Services uniforms , was
developed first in Mangalore by the German weaver and dyer, Johann Haller , working in the Basel Mission weaving division , which , among other things, was also the first to introduce mercerised yarn. Haller prepared a dye specially for hunting suits , to aid camouflage in the jungles , using the rind of cashewnut tree and the heart wood of arecanut palm ( both found in plenty in the coast ) as ingredients to extract a hue resembling “the brownish yellow dust of the Indian road “ .
The colour was named ‘Khaki’ , derived from the Persian word ‘Khaak’ meaning “ ash / dust”.
An engineer named GEORG PLEBST ( aka Plebot) who was brought in by The Mission , to fine tune the type-faces for Kannada and Malayalam printing , looked beyond his brief and made a product that earned everlasting fame for the city where it was first made : MANGALORE TILES .
A mechanical engineer by profession , Plebst had also learnt pottery and glazing as a hobby . Clay
interested him. He found that the soil by the River Netravati was of excellent quality , naturally clayey ,high in mineral content and enriched by the alluvium that got washed down from the ghats . Clay was also found in abundance in the paddy fields . At the time of his arrival , a few Europeans were already experimenting with laterite clay to make roofing tiles as they had found the locally used concave tiles ('country roof tiles') deficient in design.
Plebst decided to put his training to good use . He brought a set of moulds and screw press from
Germany , got the Netravati soil tested in Switzerland and Germany , developed drying frames and set up a workshop at Jeppu ( a locality in Mangalore) , making 500 tiles a day with the help of two natives . His pugmill ( mixer used for grinding and kneading clay into an elastic state) was turned by a pair of bullocks .
Tiles made by Plebst proved to be so good that a full fledged factory was started by The Mission in
Jeppu ,in 1865, with steam powered pugmills.
Basel Mission Tile Factory was the first Tile manufacturing factory to be set up in India . Hence the name Mangalore Tiles stuck and later, no matter where they were manufactured, that model of tile continued to be called Mangalore Tiles. Its in colloquial usage even to this day.
The Tile business was a highly successful venture of the Mission.
Mangalore Tiles were nonporous , less prone to breakage , light-weight , interlocked and were the
wonder roofing of the day . They were enthusiastically marketed through British Trade channels and
became extremely popular .
The factory very soon added other building essentials of clay to its list of products , like floor tiles , pipes ,ventilators, ridge tiles, decorative pots etc and the supportive English officers started recommending that only the products of The Basel Mission Tile Factory be used in all government buildings !
With Printing and Weaving also doing well, Basel Mission soon became the single largest industrial
entrepreneur in the region .
FEROK
The name Ferok is the shortened form of “Farooqabad” ( Town of Victory). It was the name given by The Mysore Sultanate for the new coastal Capital it set up in a small town near Kozhikode , when it occupied Malabar ( 1766- 1792) .
With Basel Mission spreading out from South Kanara to North Kerala , it wasn’t long before a Tile Factory was started there too . The place chosen was Ferok . As in Jeppu , here too the soil was found perfect for making high quality clay products.
Ferok was always known for its timber , but after the first Tile factory was set up in early 1900s , it
became the byword for Tiles in Kerala . Till today , Ferok dominates the Tiles and ceramic wear industry in Kerala with dozens of factories . The Mission had added four more tile factories in other sites in Malabar to meet demand , but those did not proliferate , down the years, in similar fashion .
“Basel Mission Tiles” made in Ferok were not only sold all over India , but also exported to Burma ,
Ceylon, Uganda , Aden, Basra , The Straits Settlements and Australia .
The Brand name of Basel Mission flew high till the second decade of the twentieth century. During
World War 1 , relations between The British, who had been major supporters , and Basel Mission ,
which was predominantly German , soured . It culminated in the British Government taking over all the ndustries operated by The Mission in 1919. Everything , including the Tile Industry , passed to The Commonwealth Trust Ltd, incorporated specifically for such takeover .
The factory at Ferok , as elsewhere , acquired the new name of Comtrust (- a name that continues to the present-) and tiles were , from then onwards, stamped only with that name .
The label “Basel Mission Tile Works Ferok ” became History.
Illustrations
All photographs : Own
Portrait of Mogling , the Newspaper , pugmill : from public domain .
Drawings of Plebst , the Factory , collage of servicemen : Own
Because every scrap , stick and stone is older than you and has a long story to share .
Recently , my brother , with plans to redesign the garden , removed the terracotta tiles a pathway was
cobbled with . Since they were perfectly good tiles he washed and put them in storage for later use .
That is when he noticed the words on the reverse : “Basel Mission Tile Works Ferok " .
None of the words rang any bells . But he smelt History!
Our ancestral home , in Mysore, was a vintage bungalow with many wings, subsidiary units and a huge garden with a tennis court . The architecture was typical of the times : open verandahs , tall pillars, high ceilinged rooms , monkeytopped dravidian roof and flooring of reddish brown terracotta tiles .
Dating from the first decade of the 20th Century , it has undergone periodic structural changes to suit the needs of the times.
The mainhouse was remodeled in late 1960s .
The Urban Ceiling Act of 1976 trimmed the original area , dematerialising the outhouse , a storage shed ,the cow barn and half the sprawling garden .
35 years ago, the last remaining annexe was pulled down, making way for an independent unit.
Through all these changes , many things have lingered on , saved or repurposed .
This lastmentioned annexe , by virtue of having been built a few years later than the main house , was
called “Puthu Veedu”and “Hosmaney” ( = New House )right upto its end .
Its doors, windows and dressed stones were all re-used in the new unit built in its place.
The terracotta floor tiles that could be salvaged in good condition were used for paving the garden
paths . There they blended gracefully with the soil , aging well , but staying fit .
These were the tiles that Brother pulled out while remodeling the garden .
The tiles gave us a name - “Basel Mission” - and compelled us to seek their hidden story .
Willingly , we dived into the great pools of information scattered in The Cloud to fish for snippets that could be sewn together as a backdrop for The Tile , a sample that now rests among the Family Memorabilia, while others will be re-used .
Here is that patchwork quilt of history that emerged from our quest .
BASEL MISSION
The Basel Evangelical Missionary Society, headquartered in Basel , Switzerland, was formed in 1815 by a group of German and Swiss religious men , as thanksgiving for Basel City being saved from Napoleon’s raid . “Basel Mission” for short , the Seminary trained Dutch and British missionaries to be sent to far flung places like Russia, Gold Coast , China , Cameroon, Borneo, Nigeria ,Latin America and Sudan on evangelical duty .
India could not be left out , of course .
The Mission sent its first three missionaries to India in 1834. They landed in Mangalore where they
learnt Kannada and Tulu and established a Kannada school (1836. ) Soon , with more missionaries , the Mission on the Kanara Coast expanded steadily.
Though the aim was evangelism , Basel Mission focused also on creating employment opportunities for local people in areas like printing, carpentry , brick making , weaving , horticulture etc . In order to train them in the necessary skills , the Mission inducted professionals from Europe regularly. Many
workshops and cottage industries were thus set up in and around Mangalore .
People who were part of this early phase of Basel Mission here have left lasting legacies , three of which merit mention .
Hermann Friedrich Mögling ,in charge of Basel Mission’s Printing Press ( estd. 1841) earned a Doctorate in Kannada , wrote and translated Kannada works and published the first ever Kannada newspaper Mangalooru Samachara in 1843. He is acknowledged as a pioneer in the world of Modern Kannada Literature.
The Mission Press also printed the English-Kannada dictionary of Rev Ferdinand Kittel, along with
Malayalam and Tulu dictionaries and grammar books.
The colour KHAKI , which was adopted by the British as the colour for the Services uniforms , was
developed first in Mangalore by the German weaver and dyer, Johann Haller , working in the Basel Mission weaving division , which , among other things, was also the first to introduce mercerised yarn. Haller prepared a dye specially for hunting suits , to aid camouflage in the jungles , using the rind of cashewnut tree and the heart wood of arecanut palm ( both found in plenty in the coast ) as ingredients to extract a hue resembling “the brownish yellow dust of the Indian road “ .
The colour was named ‘Khaki’ , derived from the Persian word ‘Khaak’ meaning “ ash / dust”.
An engineer named GEORG PLEBST ( aka Plebot) who was brought in by The Mission , to fine tune the type-faces for Kannada and Malayalam printing , looked beyond his brief and made a product that earned everlasting fame for the city where it was first made : MANGALORE TILES .
A mechanical engineer by profession , Plebst had also learnt pottery and glazing as a hobby . Clay
interested him. He found that the soil by the River Netravati was of excellent quality , naturally clayey ,high in mineral content and enriched by the alluvium that got washed down from the ghats . Clay was also found in abundance in the paddy fields . At the time of his arrival , a few Europeans were already experimenting with laterite clay to make roofing tiles as they had found the locally used concave tiles ('country roof tiles') deficient in design.
Plebst decided to put his training to good use . He brought a set of moulds and screw press from
Germany , got the Netravati soil tested in Switzerland and Germany , developed drying frames and set up a workshop at Jeppu ( a locality in Mangalore) , making 500 tiles a day with the help of two natives . His pugmill ( mixer used for grinding and kneading clay into an elastic state) was turned by a pair of bullocks .
Tiles made by Plebst proved to be so good that a full fledged factory was started by The Mission in
Jeppu ,in 1865, with steam powered pugmills.
Basel Mission Tile Factory was the first Tile manufacturing factory to be set up in India . Hence the name Mangalore Tiles stuck and later, no matter where they were manufactured, that model of tile continued to be called Mangalore Tiles. Its in colloquial usage even to this day.
The Tile business was a highly successful venture of the Mission.
Mangalore Tiles were nonporous , less prone to breakage , light-weight , interlocked and were the
wonder roofing of the day . They were enthusiastically marketed through British Trade channels and
became extremely popular .
The factory very soon added other building essentials of clay to its list of products , like floor tiles , pipes ,ventilators, ridge tiles, decorative pots etc and the supportive English officers started recommending that only the products of The Basel Mission Tile Factory be used in all government buildings !
With Printing and Weaving also doing well, Basel Mission soon became the single largest industrial
entrepreneur in the region .
FEROK
The name Ferok is the shortened form of “Farooqabad” ( Town of Victory). It was the name given by The Mysore Sultanate for the new coastal Capital it set up in a small town near Kozhikode , when it occupied Malabar ( 1766- 1792) .
With Basel Mission spreading out from South Kanara to North Kerala , it wasn’t long before a Tile Factory was started there too . The place chosen was Ferok . As in Jeppu , here too the soil was found perfect for making high quality clay products.
Ferok was always known for its timber , but after the first Tile factory was set up in early 1900s , it
became the byword for Tiles in Kerala . Till today , Ferok dominates the Tiles and ceramic wear industry in Kerala with dozens of factories . The Mission had added four more tile factories in other sites in Malabar to meet demand , but those did not proliferate , down the years, in similar fashion .
“Basel Mission Tiles” made in Ferok were not only sold all over India , but also exported to Burma ,
Ceylon, Uganda , Aden, Basra , The Straits Settlements and Australia .
The Brand name of Basel Mission flew high till the second decade of the twentieth century. During
World War 1 , relations between The British, who had been major supporters , and Basel Mission ,
which was predominantly German , soured . It culminated in the British Government taking over all the ndustries operated by The Mission in 1919. Everything , including the Tile Industry , passed to The Commonwealth Trust Ltd, incorporated specifically for such takeover .
The factory at Ferok , as elsewhere , acquired the new name of Comtrust (- a name that continues to the present-) and tiles were , from then onwards, stamped only with that name .
The label “Basel Mission Tile Works Ferok ” became History.
Illustrations
All photographs : Own
Portrait of Mogling , the Newspaper , pugmill : from public domain .
Drawings of Plebst , the Factory , collage of servicemen : Own
Nice post. Quality of those materials will remain unmatched. They seem to last centuries.
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