Playing with terracotta

Her love for colours led Ranijtha S Lokre to create beautiful terracotta products and her strokes of paint could be termed as ‘magical’!

 The young entrepreneur, who used to be a stay-at-home mother, always had the passion for painting and moulding things and this led her to form ‘Amoghasiddhi Creations’ along with her husband Sunil Lokre, a small company that sells terracotta products.

“Amogh is my son’s name and he is the inspiration behind all my works. In fact, a lot of time he likes to sit with me and play with the clay,” she says gleefully.
Ranjitha not only paints on Ganeshas, vases and face masks among other showpieces but also creates jewellery from scratch using terracotta.  While she handles the creative part of the start-up, Sunil handles the marketing and online aspects.

“I always loved painting on Ganeshas and would do it as a hobby occasionally,” she
recalls. But when she exhibited at an apartment in RT Nagar a few years ago and got a great response, she decided to turn her hobby into something more.

“One of my cousins is an event organiser and I got great encouragement from her. Besides, a lot of people told me to start learning to make terracotta jewellery,” she adds. So Ranjitha took things in her stride and started experimenting with her works. What followed soon were some earthy and beautiful neckpieces, earrings and ‘jhumkas’. She later branched out to do embroidery on canvas bags as well. “I don’t make the bags from scratch. I only embroider on them,” she says.

However, the pieces of jewellery like necklace and earrings are crafted entirely by her. “A jewellery set usually takes 45 minutes to make. The process involves making, baking and painting the pieces. Each piece is different and takes its own time,” she informs.

Be it heavy or light, chunky or simple, Ranjitha takes all kinds of orders from
her different customers on Facebook and exhibits her works at the different flea markets in the City. “I am a regular at Chitrakala Parishath among other ‘santhes’,” she notes.

Ranjitha aims at opening her own store in Bengaluru and also work with apparels. “I would love to work with ‘kurtis’ and ‘wrap-arounds’ in future and probably have a store of my own,” she says. She is also taking pottery classes to enhance her skills.  
For more details, visit her Facebook page — ‘Amoghasiddhi Creations’.