Tirupur (Tamil Nadu), Mar 25: Anandan, an artist hails from this textile town in Coimbatore District of Tamil Nadu, has created images of leaders on egg shells aiming to open a museum dedicated to art on egg shells.

Anandan got inspiration after he was encouraged by Former President A. P. J. Abdul Kalam to make his sculpture from bamboo.

After having made several sculptures from bamboo, he got the idea of making artistic creations out of egg shells.

"Generally we eat the eggs and throw away the shells. One day I wondered why we can't do something from waste eggshells. Initially when I started carving on egg shells, several of them were damaged, but I took it up as a challenge. I continued working on it and soon I learnt the knack of ensuring least or no damage to the egg shells and created models of monuments and images of renowned people," said Anandan, the sculptor.

Anandan says that he uses a small sharp tool to etch the images. He often injures his fingers when he is etching with full concentration.

Normally it takes a minimum of five days to complete one image on an egg shell and but he took more than 40 days to carve the image of Mother Teresa, Anandan said.

Some of his works on eggshells include images of various leaders like Abdul Kalam, Mother Teresa, Mahatma Gandhi, and the wonders of the world like the Taj Mahal and the Eiffel Tower. (ANI)