INDIA: In a busy sculpture workshop in west India, there is one unfamiliar face alongside the images of divine figures such as Jesus, the Virgin Mary and Hindu goddess Parvati.

This is Ivy, the late beloved wife of 82-year-old Peter Pereira, and she is being commemorated in a life-size bust. The fibreglass figure is the latest example of a growing trend: commissioning memorial sculptures of the dead.

For when a photograph is not enough, the Sequeiras - a third-generation family of religious effigy makers - operate a successful sideline to bereaved relatives who want a three-dimensional tribute to their lost loved ones.

Using old photographs to capture a likeness, the statues and busts are made of wood or fibreglass, coloured with paint and completed with realistic glass eyes. In Ivy's case, they plan to finish the look with spectacles.

“I will feel she is still here because of the statue,” said bereft Pereira, a retired cinematographer who will keep the bust in his Mumbai apartment to remember Ivy, who died aged 77 almost four years ago.

“Some people don't like to remember people who have died and gone, but not me,” said the widower. He has even commissioned a second marble-effect bust, for the garden of another family home.

The Sequeira business is based north of Mumbai in Small Giriz village, nestled in the coconut trees and banana plantations of Vasai, once a stronghold of Portuguese colonials who brought with them Catholicism and carpentry skills.

The family name itself echoes the Portuguese connection, and Benzoni Sequeira says that it was his grandfather who started the religious woodcarving business in 1920.

After several decades of producing altars and effigies, they completed their first personal memorial about 20 years ago, and demand has surged in recent times.

“It was one or two orders, but now it's continuous,” Benzoni told AFP.