MAKING WAVES WITH GLASS

It was quite a sight to see the form of a Nataraja appearing magically.  Yatendra Pratap Singh or Y P Singh, as he is better known to his clients, has been involved in glass making for a quarter of a century now.  He began without any proper training and in a short while was supplying custom made gift articles made out of glass, glass vessels and images of Gods like Nataraja, Ganesha and Jesus to retailers all over India. He was also exporting his products to Paris for a few years through a tie up with a fashion jewellery company based there but had to give it up since it took a lot of his time.

For the first ten years he was based in Uttar Pradesh. After that he came to Chennai, and he has been doing quite well, he says, “I have been able to cater to the artist in me by giving expression to my creativity with glass, which is the primary reason for me not going into retailing.  Also the satisfaction that there are only a select band of people in India who are doing what I am doing. When I started there were only three or four people who were doing this as a kind of an art.  Now there are over 50 people doing this, but only a dozen or so who can really claim to be creative geniuses or artists”.  The standing proof for this being the various awards and citations that he has received from organisations like Rotary Club and Lion’s Club.

“Anything that you can imagine in your mind I can make in glass”, he says with a hint of pride. His most famous and in-demand work being the ‘Lucky Ganesha', which come in different sizes.  He supplies over 1000 pieces per day, to just one retail outlet.  “I make around 50 varieties of Ganesha, I can not only make any shape that my customer wants but also a large number of items because I have 10 people working under me.  That has eased the supply chain quite a bit and as I said earlier it has given me time to experiment with new things and give expression to my creativity”.

For coloured objects he uses soda or lead glass, while he uses corning glass for white objects.  Soda glass is tough to mould and requires experience to mould, while corning glass is very easy to handle.  A person can make any design using corning glass after just few days of practice while it will take at least two years to handle soda glass. 

When asked as to why he kept his prices low, while the retailers to whom he supplied put exorbitant price tags on his items, he replied, “I am basically an artist and I price my products only for a 10 to 15% margin, the maximum being 15% while I sometimes go as low as even 7%.  If I price like them (the retailers), there will be no difference between them and me”.

Address: Y P Singh, 14, Bheemana Mudali Garden Road, Alwarpet,
Chennai 60 018.
Phone: 2498 1452
Pager: 9632 713611
E-mail: thewillproduct@yahoo.com

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