Selling village memories, one diorama at a time

On a small wooden base, a tin-roofed house rests in the shade of two trees. A narrow earthen path curves through the courtyard, as if worn smooth by countless footsteps.

Nearby, a tea stall glows faintly from within, jars neatly arranged, waiting for customers who will never arrive.

Everything is still — but nothing feels empty.

These are miniature village scenes created by Shaikh Ahia Jannat Emon, known as Jony, the artist behind 'Color My Life', a social media page that has quietly turned nostalgia into a thriving business.

What began as a personal experiment has grown into an enterprise with around 174,000 followers and a steady stream of orders from both Bangladesh and abroad. Each piece can sell for up to Tk8,500, and demand has been rising steadily.

Trained as a textile engineer, Jony does not come from a formal art background. He never studied fine arts at an institution. What he had instead was a deep familiarity with village life, absorbed through visits to his grandparents' homes in Sirajganj and Bogura, and a habit of drawing from childhood. Over time, that instinct evolved into skill.

In 2022, he opened a Facebook page and a TikTok account under the name Color My Life. Initially, he posted paintings: portraits, cartoons, calligraphy, and nature scenes. Then came a turning point.

He began to wonder what would happen if the rural landscapes so often painted in two dimensions could be rebuilt as physical spaces — converted into three-dimensional miniature models. The idea struck a chord.

Bangladesh has no shortage of architectural models, sculptures, or modern design projects. But rural life — clustered houses, unfenced courtyards, tea stalls that double as social centres, riverbanks shaped by habit rather than maps — has rarely been explored in three-dimensional form. Jony stepped into that gap.

His miniatures recreate village scenes not as museum exhibits, but as lived spaces. Tin roofs are unevenly rusted. Courtyards are bare, interrupted by tufts of grass where no one bothered to clear them. Paths cut diagonally through fields, following or ignoring symmetry altogether. Trees lean; shade spills where it wants to. Everything looks familiar because nothing looks planned. And yet, beneath it all, there is an unspoken order.

All of it is handmade. Using PVC sheets, clay, cork board, artificial grass, wire, foam, and soil, Jony builds each scene piece by piece. Tree trunks are shaped by twisting copper or iron wire. Foliage is made from sofa foam, blended into a fine texture, dyed green, and applied by hand. Houses, benches, tea counters — nothing comes off a machine.

The process is slow, deliberate, and labour-intensive. But that, Jony says, is where the satisfaction lies.

He does not work alone. A small group of friends and younger collaborators assist him, often from their own homes. Some focus on trees, others on structural elements. The final piece comes together through teamwork — an approach that allows for larger, more detailed scenes without sacrificing craft quality.

What surprised Jony most was the response.

Orders began arriving not only from within Bangladesh, but from expatriates living abroad — people who had not returned to their villages for years, sometimes decades. For them, the miniatures triggered a particular kind of longing.

"The village nostalgia works very strongly," he says. "They want to keep those memories close."

Customers commission pieces to decorate their homes, give as gifts, or display in offices. Some purchase them as business décor; others simply to keep a fragment of the past on a shelf.

The scenes evoke environments that are steadily disappearing — villages reshaped by brick houses, concrete roads, and rapid urban spillover. That sense of urgency has only added to their appeal.

Each model captures a Bangladesh many fear is slipping away: the informal order of rural life, where houses face each other without walls, paths emerge from repeated use, and the tea stall remains the centre of conversation long after sunset.

Jony is careful not to romanticise the village as a perfect place. Instead, he treats it as a lived reality — modest, improvised, deeply human.

Financially, the project is now sustainable. With prices reaching Tk8,500 per piece and a steady flow of orders, Color My Life has become more than a hobby. Yet Jony remains cautious about framing it purely as a business.

For him, the work offers something salaried jobs often do not: creative control and mental peace.

As Bangladesh urbanises rapidly, Jony's miniatures act as quiet counterpoints — small reminders of what once shaped everyday life. They fit on a table, but they hold entire worlds. And increasingly, people are willing to pay to bring those worlds home.

"When you work for yourself," he says, "even if the work is hard, it feels different. This is my own work. My own passion."