Here, used tyres turn into beautiful craft items. Say, a chair, flower vase, or a fish bowl.
When lockdown left Shiju C.K., who runs a tyre puncturing and vulcanising shop at Mattukatta on Kattappana-Kottayam State highway, with ample time to himself, he thought creative.
Using used tyres as raw material, he made several craft items, one of which was a chair. It had many takers. His place is now visited by people who come there just to sit on the chair.
“You can sit on it with more ease than on a wooden chair with cushions,” he said. The chair does not look very costly, looks rough and beaten, but is in fact very comfortable to sit on.
With more time at hand, he began making more chairs. And each of them came out different. “This is because I made them using only rough tools and without much craftsmanship,” he adds. There are also beautiful flower vases and other items made of used tyres in his shop bearing the look of finished metal or earthen products.
But his favourite are the unpainted ones like the raw chairs. According to him, used tyre loses its original, rugged look when painted.
The idea of craft from the tyres dawned on him from a crisis he faced in the post-lockdown period. “We used to sell the used tyres at a nominal price to those coming from Tamil Nadu. However, for long, they did not turn up and disposing of the used tyres became a problem. In addition I had a lot of free time. This helped me to make something out of the unwanted tyres. Thus came the craft items from used tyres,” he says.
Shiju does not want to sell the items he made, as he feels they are not finished products. He lets the items remain as unfinished craft items. “This was a hobby I found to kill the time,” he says, adding that many appreciated him, as the idea of chairs from used tyres was new to them.
The period has made him realise that he could turn into a craftsman in used tyres if his business turns dull. It also helps him improve skills, and is a sort of escape from the routine works, he says. And sensing the demand the items could have, he feels investing time in making a variety of items is not bad idea.