• Kanday turns responsibly sourced goat hide into translucent puppets and paintings
• He created a foundation that trains the next generation of leather shadow puppeteers
• His troupe performs the great Indian epics as live shadow theatre across India

Kanday Anjanappa specialises in Tholu Bommalata, a form of leather shadow puppetry from South India dating back 2,000 years. A 7th-generation artisan, he learned the craft in his father’s workshop as a child. Kanday stretches upcycled hide onto a metal frame, leaving it in the sun to transform into a translucent parchment resembling frosted glass. He hand draws, dyes and assembles each figure piece by piece. Against a backlit screen, the puppets glow to display coloured shadows of gods and warriors from India's great Sanskrit epics. “My dream is to introduce leather puppetry to international audiences," Kanday says. He collaborates with other artisans to create theatrical puppets, contemporary objects and large-scale installations, while teaching at institutions such as the National Institute of Fashion Technology.