beautifully crafted machine, hit by war, salvaged for art. A victim of the September 22, 1914 bombardment of Madras while in the Burmah oil company stock yard Bungalow in the possession of it’s agent Mr. Shah.

One R. S. Vasudeva Shenoy, a Gowd Saraswathi Brahmin clan, fled Goa to escape the Portuguese religion persecution and took asylum in the Island of Vypeen that belonged to the then state of Cochin.  The family soon set up an oil extraction business.  By mid 1800s, their oil mill could crush 50 tons of Copra and extract 6 tons of oil in just 12 hours of work.  And used about 10,000 coconut trees.  This product was dispersed through European merchants in Cochin.

Most of their mills were wooden crushers and some driven manually. The large ones in stone were driven by bullocks.  The oil extractor exhibited here was a gift to Mr. Jogiah Kamath, the capable manager of Shenoy’s family business by an European buyer. The machine arrived on the shores of Vypeeen much before electricity hit the island.  The machine served the Shenoy mills as a sampler and was later condemned. The machine was spotted in the back yard of the Shenoy mills by an agent of Burmah oil and for sheer beauty carried it to the Madras Presidency by one Mr. Shah. The iron balls and the bearing would reveal that the crusher was in minimal use, while its funnels and the exterior dictate the wear and tear of junkyard life for longer years. It was personally spotted by Mr. Steve Borgia in the year 2000 and brought into the collection after minimal restoration. As a new machine from Europe it is said to have been exhibited at the Industrial and agricultural exhibition in Cochin during the days of the British Raj.