Message in a bottle

Children from 8 to 14 years worked together with a landscape architect in Dubai to create a dhow in a bottle, giving a ship in a bottle a twist. We were there.

Dr Prabhakar Rao, chief operations officer, International Association for Human Values, held the workshop for Art Excel kids at the Richmond Hotel Apartments in Bur Dubai.

Excerpts from an interview: What prompted your unusual hobby of creating a ship in a bottle?

One of the art forms I have nursed from my college days is putting ships in bottles. This ancient art dates back to the 18th century when sailors sailed for many months and created artistic bottled ships. However, in the 19th century, with the advent of the steam ships, this art form faced a premature death.

In 1970, a British man, Donald Hubbard, led a group of from all over the world to revive the art and I got actively involved in 1976.

Why did you decide to create a 'dhow in a bottle'?

I happened to be a judge for one of the competitions held for Art Excel for kids and felt this would work here. I wanted to adapt it to this part of the world. The tradition of the Arabian dhow seems to have gone out of fashion so we came up with the idea of putting this beautiful marine craft into a bottle. The world's first dhow in a bottle has been created by the children who attended the workshop.

What challenges did you face?

There weren't many pictures available so we sought input from some UAE nationals and discovered the dhow sail is not actually triangular but rectangular.

Did you know?

The bottle is never touched, cracked or cut open.

The ship is not built inside the bottle. It is assembled outside the bottle and any vertical features are put together to collapse horizontally.

The entire ship can be folded to look more like a cigar which has a diameter to fit through the opening of the bottle.
The sea is made from Plasticine and the ocean waves are painted to give a rippling water effect.

The dhow, in this case, has been created with a block of wood, toothpicks and cloth for the sails.

Once created, the ship is placed inside the bottle with extended threads which form part of the nautical model. These are then pulled to create a vertical shape and give the ship its form.