Sayif also goes by Binod Bihari, and he studies Computer Science and Engineering in Dhaka. He calls himself a son of Bengal who is drawn to soil and terracotta. His dolls range from figurines small enough to hold between two fingers to pieces three feet tall. He has also cut doll heads free of their bodies and made them into jewellery.
The name tells you how it's done. Tepa putul means a doll shaped by pinching or pressing, and Sayif is careful about that. It is what separates his work from the mould-made dolls sold beside it. For generations the dolls were made mostly by women in potter households, from the same river clay they used for cooking pots. Many show a mother holding a child. Scholars link these figures to much older mother-goddess figurines from the Bengal delta. They used to sell for a few taka each at rural fairs, as toys and as ritual objects.
His apprenticeship came about through the country's political unrest. In July 2024 the student-led quota reform protests spread across Bangladesh, and his Higher Secondary Certificate examinations were first postponed, then cancelled. About 1.45 million candidates were left waiting. Sayif travelled to Narsingdi and joined the potters of a Pala Para, the neighbourhood where families of the Pal community have worked clay for generations. Many of those families have since given up the trade, because cheap aluminium, melamine and plastic have replaced their pots.
Narsingdi has been working clay for a long time. At Wari-Bateshwar in the same district, archaeologists have dug up terracotta objects from a fortified settlement about 2,450 years old.
After Narsingdi, Sayif spent about six months as artist-in-residence with the photojournalist Mahmud Rahman at the 55 Kodomtola initiative. He began to exhibit, and the sales paid his tuition for a semester.
Not everyone wanted this for him. His family objected to figurative clay work on religious grounds, and for several months he stopped.
Then he started again.
He now plans to study ceramics, perhaps in Italy, or fashion design elsewhere in Europe, so that he can represent Bengali culture abroad. He would be taking with him a skill he learned from potters whose trade is dying out.