The petals of a rose, the veins on a leaf. Irshad Hussain can etch all these and more on metal. He is an artist, and his art is sia kalam, practised in Uttar Pradesh’s Moradabad, popularly known as pital nagari (brass city).
The pieces he has engraved through the day lie scattered around him in his workshop in Peerzada: peacocks, oil lamps, cups decorated with a swastika, prayer bells, and a lion-head on the hilt of a sword.
Hussain comes from a long line of sia kalam artisans and started working when he was 10 years old. The diya (lamp) that he is engraving is positioned on a tipai, a small wooden table, and adjusted between two stones placed on the table. A thread tied to the diya runs under the table and is gripped by his right foot. As Hussain strikes a wooden stick on the pen-shaped chisel, a fine pattern emerges on the metal.
“Customers often ask for unique patterns for personalised gifts – names of couples in Hindi, Urdu, English, Quranic surahs, motifs to hang on walls. I decorate them with flowers because they like it,” he tells PARI. “My favourites are the ones with roses.”
The master engraver is seated in the doorway of a 10-square-foot room that he shares with other artisans. “Seekhne ke waqt ye kalakari lagta tha [At the time of learning it felt like an artform],” he says, recalling his early days. “Aur ab bas kaam [Now it’s just work].”




















