Pan maker Isa taking the world by storm

Maybe you’ve seen him in Maracas. He would be the dark-skinned, dreadlocked, lean fellow wearing colourful clothing and selling his works of art, tiny little panmen that wobble when you shake them.

His name is Isa (pronounced “eye-sah”) Contant, the eldest son of wire bender and pan-maker Andrew “Bambi” Contant of Woodbrook. His mother was also one of the first steelband women in St James, a product of Starlift. These tiny panmen were originally his father’s design, which began (strangely enough) as an ashtray. Now 43, the younger Contant has taken these pans to Africa, Ghana, Sri Lanka, Egypt, India, Europe, America and Germany, where he has been based for nearly 11 years. Why Germany, you wonder? “I made one visit to Tobago to sell some pans and met a German lady who refused to let me go,” he said, grinning. “I was 31 at the time and she was just 25, but she took me to Germany and that was it. We got married and had children, but I always come home for the Carnival season and to visit family too. But one thing I could say is that these pans have afforded me some wonderful opportunities. I even got to see Australia.”

He’s in Glencoe for the time being until his next trip abroad, but said that he’s been keeping busy with his craft. Besides making the tiny panmen, he and his father have been crafting mini-pans (that you can actually play) since 1955. “Since I small I know my father bending wire and playing pan,” Contant said. (His father has been involved with mas as the main wire bender for designers Stephen and Elsie Lee Heung.) “These panmen were from an earlier design of his, you know, as ashtrays. I could remember when I was about six or seven years old and going to St Crispin School in Woodbrook my friends and I would be hunting for bits of metal and things, then I would carry what I found for my father to make the ashtrays with them. My dad gave us (him and his brothers) the start and we started to make them ourselves, and as I got older I started to work with my father, making the figures and mini pans too.”

Contant would eventually leave Diego Martin Jr Sec at 13, abandoning home, school and his first girlfriend, all in the same day. He began growing his dreadlocks and moved to Powder Magazine. To survive, he did a little shoe making, continued to work with his father and learned to “plant garden”. “Man, I coulda take barren land and make it fertile, yes!” he bragged, smiling broadly. And then the panmen evolved. “Now my father designed these panmen in the early 80’s but the bodies were straight,” he explained. “They had a spine going through the back to keep it stiff. One day Daddy accidentally cut the spine and see the thing start to move like it dancing... he come running to me and bawling, ‘Aaaaay, look! De man beating! De panman beating!’ That was the last day we put in the spine.”

The tiny panmen have become so popular now that it’s not uncommon to see them in souvenir shops throughout the country, and at his own store Finders Keepers, located at the corner of Pole Carew and Brabant Streets in Woodbrook. At the store he also sells island wear, original hand-painted sarongs from Bali (yes, he’s been there too), the five gallon mini pans and other craft items. It takes Contant an hour and a half to craft a mini pan from a five gallon paint can and on a good day, he can make 36 of the wobbly panmen, in under 14 hours, using birdcage wire, a soldering iron and years of skill. His technique is so fine-tuned that during the interview, his hands were moving swiftly, putting another one together.

He sells them in bulk, 24 pans per order. He’s been so lucky with them, he even sold out on the day of the attempted coup back in 1990. “Boy, I always give people this joke,” he said. “I had made an order of 24 for a client in the People’s Mall, but when I carried them for him, he liming and drinking and telling me to come back Monday. So I got vex, I was like, ‘Man, how you could tell me come back Monday and all during the week you telling me to bring them Friday and I have people to pay?’ The man get vex and tell me he ‘eh want nutten again’. I just watch him and say, ‘Man, you go lose more than that.’ “By the time I reach down Queen Street, it was only to see looters running in the mall, ready to take things. I hearing people saying how Abu Bakr had taken over. You would believe I was able to sell out them pans before seven o’clock the night? And to people who in taxis, who was trying to run away, like they tell theyself let them get something as a souvenir... I there moving fast, bawling ‘Panman again, Panman again!’ And I sold them out.’

“I’ve sold them in Germany too, even though I have to give them an education about pan and Trinidad each time. But they appreciate it as a good piece of wire art. And now that I put the extra springs at the sides  as pen holders, they like them even more.” Always the perfectionist, he maintains high standards in his workmanship and says that he and his father make the best pans. “I’ve seen other mass-produced mini pans and they look ugly to me, man. When you see ours, you know someone took their time to bring them to that stage. That is what you call care. That is how a craftsman works.” He leaves for Germany in late March, but if you want to get your hands on a few wobbly panmen, call him at 632-0623 or 763-4494.