PROFILE

Butterfly-shaped sun-catchers glint in the sunlight, a multi-hued house-shaped candle-stand reflects its vivid colours in the candlelight, a gentle breeze plays with a wind chime made out of a bottle and a massive table lamp in vivid colours brightens a corner. Saarus Nirhali is a busy person, adeptly cutting coloured glass and converting it into delicate stained glass objets d’art, which find their way into her Bangalore studio, The Glasshopper. “Once you learn to cut the glass right, you’ve won half the battle,” says Nirhali.

Nirhali’s specialisation lies in using coloured glass to create her designs. “Stained glass art involves using good quality coloured glass as material while glass painting involves painting the glass with glass paints,” says Nirhali.

At her studio in upmarket Indiranagar in Bangalore, you’ll find Nirhali cutting and piecing together eyecatching designs. “The idea is to create Tiffany style (the original stained glass art using copper foil for fusing the glass) objects,” she says. A lawyer by qualification, Nirhali moved to Bangalore from Mumbai after getting married in 2007.

She enrolled for a course in glass-cutting and discovered that she loved working with glass. Her first buyers were friends and family who loved what she designed — and placed orders for more. Nirhali was so hooked to the craft that after eight months, she launched The Glasshopper, in October 2008.

Nirhali began by creating small pieces like sun-catchers, wind chimes, table lamps and candle-holders, which found instant buyers. Soon, she launched her website (www.glasshopper.in) with product details and more orders poured in.

Sourcing the material was no cakewalk for the lawyer-turned-artist. Nirhali did a lot of legwork to discover places where she could source good quality stained glass. She initially found a dealer in Mumbai. But today, she sources the glass from a US company.

She begins by drawing different shapes (which when combined would form a figure or a design) on the glass and then cuts them with a glass-cutting pencil. Once all the shapes are cut, she sticks a copper foil tape on the edges of all the pieces. Next, she uses a soldering machine with lead wire, which melts with the heat, and applies this over the copper edges. The molten lead then coats and sticks to the copper foil and works as an adhesive to join the glass pieces.

Apart from her products, Nirhali also organises five-day workshops in which she teaches just two students. The workshop costs Rs 10,000 and focuses on glass-cutting. She provides the students the materials required for designing.

Nirhali has also contributed to the stained glass interiors of some well-known restaurants like The Olive Beach and Made In India. Apart from her own studio, her products are available in Bangalore’s The Purple Turtle and Sunshine’s Garden Boutique, a garden accessories shop.

Trends

Nirhali says that stained glass is being used in big lamps or chandeliers that are customised to go with the colour scheme or décor of a house. According to her, restaurants and hotels prefer to make a statement with huge stained glass panels and lamps, which leave a lasting impression on the guests.

Smaller items like sun-catchers or wind chimes meanwhile are also hotsellers for homes as they add hints of colour to living rooms and gardens. “Wind chimes and sun-catchers can be hung from tree branches or windows to catch the sunlight,” suggests Nirhali.

PROducts

She updates her collection with new designs regularly. Recently, she designed a dog-shaped sun-catcher for a friend and inspired by that piece, subsequently designed a pug, terrier and a labrador.

Some of the hotsellers at The Glasshopper are the butterfly-shaped sun-catchers and wind chimes made from bottles. She has priced the sun-catchers between Rs 250 and Rs 1,000 while the bottle wind chime costs Rs 600. It’s made by cutting a bottle into half with finely polished edges. A rectangular piece of glass is tied to a string and placed inside the bottle. It is this piece that makes the sound when the string moves with the wind.

Another interesting piece is the house-shaped candle stand with blue doors and red roof, priced at Rs 750. The glass lamps can take about three weeks or more to create, depending on the design.

Nirhali has also been designing lampshades, window and door panels, panels for ceilings, candle lamps, wall hangings, bowls and table tops in stained glass. These are priced according to their designs.