BENGALURU: It’s quite common for visitors at Guddi’s Frames of Arts, a store on St John’s Road, to spot Bhavani Rao sporting a dress covered in sawdust. Rao’s family owns the store where she is the chief carpenter. Having been part of the family- run business, where they specialise in framing collectables, Rao got into carpentry more out of necessity.
“Because of the lockdown, the store’s carpenter went back to his village, and I fell short of my ma i n carpenter. They are irreplaceable, because either the price quotient is high or the emotional quotient. For example, we have framed a Kodava dagger, which is two generations old.
Now, if some damage happens to it, we can’t replace it,” says Rao, who has also framed an original painting of the late artist MF Husain. Often addressed as the ‘carpenter in a dress’, Rao says it is quite unusual for people to find girls picking up carpentry.
“Since we deal with highprofile clients, making the best impression in this day and age is to dress formally. So the easiest I found was to sport a dress...it’s easy to work in at the workshop and at the same time, looks presentable while meeting clients. I have the full machinery in place, the table saw, cutting machine and the works.
When clients visit me, I am covered in sawdust, even if I wear an apron. So they started calling me a ‘carpenter in a dress’,” says Rao with a laugh. Rao,who has a bachelor’s degree in commerce, says the principle they follow for framing is that customers should themselves be able to remove the framework without any help from a handyman.
“We don’t use nails, tapes or any sort of adhesive. People have framed the objects and taken them to the UK, US and Australia,” she adds. Rao’s passion for her work can be felt in her voice too, when she speaks about her work. Surprisingly enough, she was never interested in carpentry until she stepped into her family business four years ago.
“Now, I have a cut in the hand or blisters in the leg. My dad was into all of this so I knew the basic workings. But I actually took it up seriously in the last couple of years,” she says, adding her mother and sisters have also been into c reat ive work. In terms of the next step in the carpentry aspect, Rao is planning to start a furniture business where they want to focus on different kinds of jointing techniques.