A doll's house

For 14-year-old Anagha Upadhyaya, a student of Chinmaya Vidyalaya, Koramangala, arts and crafts is a challenging and interesting world. She was 11, when she was visiting  an art store to get craft material to make  quilled earrings when she saw handmade dolls arranged in a thematic way. The arrangement and the  expertise that went behind each doll fascinated her.  She came home and looked up  doll deigns on the internet and found them intriguing.

Anagha started off this passion with paper quilled dolls and moved on to pipe cleaner dolls and 'Dasara' dolls eventually.  She  has a collection of 120 paper quilled dolls, 20 pipe cleaner dolls and four Dasara dolls. She says that the process for each of these dolls is different from each other. From wire to paper quilling strips, each dolls requires different materials to make. "I started the hobby with small dolls which  were inspired from designs on the internet.  I love making these dolls in different themes still," she says.

In  quilled dolls, she has collections like 'Family at a picnic', 'Sipping tea in the garden', 'Balakrishna with Yashoda', 'Krishna with cows' and dolls like students and teachers at a school, models at a fashion show and dolls in tradition attire. She also has a collection of cartoon dolls like Doremon, Winnie The Pooh, Mickey Mouse, and Snoopy. "My favourites in this lot are the ones on Krishna and Ganesha, and bharathanatyam dolls. I took a lot of time to make them and they are very dear to me," she says.

In pipe cleaner dolls, her collection constitutes of themes like doctor and patient, a man riding a horse, cartoon character and animals like lions, puppies and cats. "A black puppy is my favourite  because it is cute and  came out perfect," she says.      

The teenager created a record in India Book of Records in October 2017, for the  largest collection of own handmade paper dolls with the largest doll measuring 18 cm in height. Her collection comprises dolls which are as tiny as 6  cm too. "A simple doll can take about half a day to complete and other complicated bigger dolls can take up to two days to finish. When I am feeling creative, I  like completing the doll at one stretch," she says.    

"Apart from the award, family and friends have also been very encouraging. I have gifted dolls to them too. My  parents,  Suparna Upadhyaya and  Vasudeva Upadhyaya K S are very encouraging and keep inspiring me to work more on more designs," she says.

Her dolls are vibrant and red is her favourite  colour to work with.  "One can see a lot of it in my collection," she says.  Anagha  wants to continue making dolls and wants to work on an orchestra-themed doll setup.  

Anagha, who  is  also a dancer and makes bags as a hobby, loves doll-making. "It has been a very satisfying hobby as it is very creative and challenging. One needs a lot of concentration to make them and the end product is very unique. I feel very relaxed after I have made a doll," she says.