A city-based artist and goldsmith has recreated the Chandrayaan-3 lander-rover configuration in gold to commemorate the August 23 soft-landing on the lunar south pole. What’s amazing about the scale model is that it’s so tiny it sits on the head of a pin. You actually need a magnifying lens to make out the features!
The miniature model is the work of Ganesh Subramaniam of Poojappura, an artist known for similar, hand-crafted Lilliputian creations that have won him accolades and a place in record books. The work, in gold and acrylic, shows the Vikram lander with its ramp down and the rover Pragyan half-way down it.
Perched on a pin-head, the miniature model is only 0.80 mm in height. Three milligrams of gold went into the work. Acrylic was used to craft the solar panels and the wheels of the rover. Mr. Subramaniam says it took him two months of painstaking work to complete the model.
“The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) made the nation proud by successfully landing the mission on the moon. The miniature Chandrayaan model is a small tribute to the achievement,” he said.
ISRO had launched the Chandrayaan-3 mission on July 14. The lander touched down near the lunar south pole on August 23, making India the first country to fulfil this challenging task.
Hailing from a family of craftsmen of goldsmiths, Ganesh Subramaniam first experimented with ‘nano art’ as a way of doing something different. In 2005, he grabbed headlines by crafting a mustard seed-sized ‘boat and boatman.’
Subsequent works numbering nearly a hundred include three elephants in the eye of a needle, a 3.5 mm-long ‘Ananthasayanam’, a 3-mm tall working number lock, the Crucifixion on the head of a pin, and the ‘Dasavatharam’. Mr. Subramaniam has held a number of exhibitions of his works in Kerala and other States. His miniature art work also found a place in several record books.
Crafting these extremely tiny ‘sculptures’ is painstaking work. It calls for considerable patience and is hard on the eyes. Mr. Subramaniam, now 48, does not wear glasses though. He credits his good eyesight to a steady regimen of yoga and meditation.
Ganesh Subramaniam is married to Preetha. The couple has a son, Vishnu, and a daughter, Vaishnavi.
