There is pepperoni everywhere.
Morsels of rice, plates of biryani, mustard seeds, chillies, and pomegranate lie strewn across Shilpa Mitha’s work table. And it does not help that “I have butter fingers,” laughs the Chennai-based artist, who started Sueno Souvenir in 2011.
Despite the confession, Shilpa’s miniature food creations in clay are works of precision. Each tiny piece incorporates a range of textures, curves, finishes. For example, her pomegranate seeds have dual tones, the dosas look fresh-off-the tawa and the banana leaf plates mimic the ridges and patterns of an actual leaf. “I have tiny hands. I was made for this,” she smiles.
“I have been doing this for 11 years. I was much quicker then because I wasn’t doing as much detailing. What took me 10 minutes then, takes me 20 minutes now,” says Shilpa. Her first creation was a pair of earrings in the shape of a burger. “It was a random idea. I wanted burger because it has so many layers,” she says. Eventually she moved on to creating miniature food magnets. “I was getting bored of magnets. In fact, I get bored by the fact that people still want to keep buying the dosa magnet. I try to phase it out but keep coming back to it because of demand.”
Now, she is all set to create a line of jewellery comprising earrings, necklaces and pendants. There are perfectly shaped croissants, slices of cheesy pizza, well stuffed burgers, with cakes, cupcakes, sandwiches and more “junk food” in the pipeline.
The pieces are lightweight and weigh around 10 grams. Sizes vary from 1. 75 inches to 2.5 inches. However, her largest and most painstaking creation so far has been a four inch sadhya magnet, shaped like a banana leaf with 17 dishes on it.
“Biryani miniatures are just as time consuming. First, I make each grain of rice with clay and then put them together. Then I check if the customer wants chicken, vegetarian or egg biryani,” says Shilpa. Based on that, she adds chicken 65, raita, brinjal etc. I have to make everything in layers. Each layer needs to dry before I put them all together,” she explains.
And does her clay culinary prowess extend to the actual kitchen as well? “I am not into cooking,” she laughs. “After spending an entire day creating these I don’t want to see food again.”
For details log into suenosouvenir.in/shop
