At Oswald Emporium we stopped by after the tour to the Agra Red Fort to see the demonstration of inlays. It is not an ordinary work their expertise in shaping those delicate semi-precious stones are obtained by years f experience, and they actually come the families or descendants of those who who build the Taj Mahal and the Fort. See they still used some conventional method that had been used by the 13th century builders for there is no equivalent apparatus in today’s technology that can do the same precision and ease of the equipment. See how wise the old age is. Below is a close-up of one side of the octagon showing how the small stones were inlaid.

This is a finished product of marble cut octagonally to depict the pattern used in Taj Mahal with thousands of very small semi-precious stones inlaid to create the final design.

These are some of the stone carvings and semi-precious stones inlaid in the columns and walls of red sand stone they imported from Rajasthan and of marble stone, known as the hardest kind. Thousands of their workers came from Persia (Iran) and Turkey who were experts in stone works. All imported materials were transported by camels, and I can say that it is pretty fast transport, see my camel ride experience.

Their type of marble is the hardest kind yet they had carved into it shapes and patterns to accommodate their designs. These marble stone were crystallize, and with proper light, will reflect light from behind thus making it look like transparent. Some of the in laid semi-precious stones also reflects back light.

Upon touring around the fort perimeter and numbers of palaces and buildings, they seemed like just ordinary ones except for the delicate works of stone, but checking everything, you can see the wisdom of old. This window is just an ordinary closed window as seen from outside but when inside, it serves as a natural air conditioning that it really sucks air and makes the room cold and maintain it that way as it can’t go out. It is even more powerful that the modern fans. On the right, I didn’t know that there is someone on my back, lol. On the first photo, it is a well that used to collect the waters which cool down every room in summer, how they cooled them down is through their hollow stone walls circulating the water around with slaves and workers pumping the water up to the palaces. For me it is just simply, amazing.

To see such massive architectural works that has been standing for so many centuries is amazing enough, knowing the efforts and the transportation of the materials and peoples in that time, using camels, elephants and other beasts of burden carrying their imported jems and the stones to build the palaces and buildings, but what made us appreciate it in total awe is the inlaid works that seemed so intricate and delicate work of art by expert people of that time. Jewels and semi-precious stones were inlaid to the main stone creating colorful and beautiful pattern depicting their style in their era. It was really amazing considering the amount of work and man-hours those thousands of workers and slaves had to do for so many years to complete the fort and palaces. It is just a shame that those semi-precious stones were now gone as they had been stolen. But the remains of the structure is still the same in strength and beauty, you can’t help looking past the people that had done every intricacies to create such complicated designs.