When hues of colours shine through a bottle...

CHENNAI: A lcohol consumption is injurious to health, but the different varieties of bottles that they come in could make for lovely home décor. Colourful and shiny, these bottles can be decorated with fairy lights to give your room a lovely makeover. Lavanya Shankar, a performing artist, officially launched her venture — ‘Bodhai’ in the beginning of the year and has been painting and selling bottles in different shapes and sizes with various themes.

“The idea of painting bottles started about two to three years ago, when we had to raise money to go for the Commonwealth Youth Dance Festival in Glasgow (which we were selected to go for as part of our all-girl dance ensemble — High Kicks). We conducted a yard sale and believe it or not but the bottles were a massive hit,” she smiles. Although she did not take it forward then, soon Lavanya realised the need for personalised presents for occasions like birthdays, anniversaries, etc. And that is how Bodhai was born.
 Collecting many bottles from family and friends, Lavanya says that cocktail parties were her jackpot, “because that’s where I get maximum number of bottles from”.

Priced anywhere between `500 to `1,000 depending on their size and the level of intricacy and detailing, these bottles are custom designed. “There was a friend who was gifting it to somebody who was going abroad. The only specification she mentioned was that he plays multiple sports. I asked her for more details and we decided to pick five sports he really likes. I used my favourite medium — a tissue base (tissue and glue pasted on the bottle) and divided the six panels, where five of them symbolised each sport, and right in the centre was a cut out of a silhouette pic of him. So when he puts the light inside, his pic alone will be on the glass apart from the tissue base, which will be of a completely different shade,” she recalls.

Ask her about the challenges of painting on a bottle and she immediately says that it is a challenge to get the silhouette right. “The silhouette should look like the person itself and not some random guy, so perfecting can be quite challenging,” she explains. “If I sit at a stretch then let’s say three hours, but I can’t sit like that as well. Timing totally depends on the piece I am working on as well.”
‘Bodhai’ — a name that was collectively thought over and finalised by her family, she says makes a lot of heads turn. “Lot of people tell me that it is a quirky name ” she smiles.