A big celebration of the fine things that make life a pleasure, such as beautiful art, carpets, pottery, furniture, tableware, and craftsmanship, the AD Design Show this year wants to recognise the power of ‘karigari’. Karigars or craftsmen, as they are known in translation, are considered the heart and soul of what India can produce today.
What with the several exhibitions we have seen launched across the country giving local artists and weavers from different regions the opportunity to be seen and heard, through their work.
To take place at the luxe and globe like massive area of NSCI Dome in Mumbai, having commenced on October 18 and to continue through the festive weekend, the show has been designed to recognise the power of the village weaver, embroiderer and potter.
That endeavour will be the fulcrum for the magazine’s magnum opus once again. Fittingly titled the ‘Power to the Karigari initiative’, at the ‘Craftsmanship Pavilion’ five kinds of crafts from everywhere will be out in the open, for all visitors to admire.
The show promises to mix tradition with modernity in all the artefacts, products and lines showcased, because it is trying to tell us that ignoring one’s roots is not the way forward. The future respects tradition and the past, and will not forget.
Says Greg Foster, Editor of AD India, “Power to the Karigar, our showcase of the finest craftsmanship from across India, is back.” We read, that Foster wants the local craftsman to flourish.
An Englishman, Foster is someone who perhaps sees India from a foreign lens, and is perhaps pained to see local workmanship go to waste, or be ignored by buyers who still only want to ape the West.
Stately riches
Some trades on display will be Manipur’s Longpi pottery, gyaser silk weaving from Varanasi where Benarasi saris will be evinced, Naga textile weaving, white clay pottery from Kutch, and hand embroidery from Delhi.
The different karigars will take people down memory lane with series that introduce them to “hand-moulded” black pottery (Manipur), and rich and ethereal silver and gilded brocades which were on Tibetan robes but were then turned into sarees by Swati and Sunaina (Varanasi).
Viewers will then move to Nagaland where the works of studio Heirloom Naga will bring Naga art to Bombay. The social enterprise gives work to several local Naga ladies, where the women make weaves and do backstrap looming (Nagaland).
Mirroring the simple beauty of the white stretches of sand at the Rann of Kutch, will be Ramju Ali’s white pottery hand-painted by his sister. His pottery will take us back to days of simplicity where a diurnal practice in the kitchen was bringing down a maati in which to make buttermilk, or a kunnu to boil one’s carbs like rice and milk (Kutch).
Last but not the least, Talianna, a textile studio in the capital city, will platform its founder Peter D’Ascoli’s mad love for Indian textiles. The know-how of how he embroiders will be explained to attendees by the master from his studio (New Delhi).
By reaching out to people from different Indian states, those that will have something to show for India’s fertility and diverseness in the arts and the crafts, the AD Design Show 2019 will endeavour to fulfil its commitment to emancipating the rural cooperative unit.
A unit which functions as a community, produces as a community and uses material in its immediate environment to create something powerful, something with creativity on its mind.
Embroidered delights
Embroidery is another chief theme this year at the AD Design Show. Embroidered rooms curated by Jean-Francoise Lesage, called Le Cabinet de Curiosites, have potential to draw in maximum crowds at the event. The cabinets will be like a ‘modern museum’.
The trend of the renaissance, or the revival of the arts, will feature big-time at AD in 2019. The voluptuousness of renaissance painting, the plight of the human being, the beauty of the human form will be seen in these renaissance rooms.
Even though in spirit. How renaissance these cabinets will be is something only a bystander will be able to figure out on going to the show. The ‘mise en scene’ of the cabinets will be the exhibition’s showstopper. Jean-Francois Lesage’s Vastrakala from Madras was contacted by AD to put together this “unique collection of collectibles.”
While its visual elements and scenography were prepared by architect Neils Schoenfelder of Mancini Enterprises. “Restrained and refined” will be the show, and for all practical purposes, we encourage you to go this year and see this for yourself.
Expounds Foster about the rest of the show and all that it has for the city’s architecture lovers, “Our keynote speakers include a rare public appearance by the jeweller Viren Bhagat, British designer Ilse Crawford, and Humberto Campana, who is coming from Sao Paulo just for the weekend.
What I'm most looking forward to seeing is ‘Le Cabinet de Curiosite’, curated by Jean-Francois Lesage with scenography by Niels Schoenfelder. With embroidered walls, the finest design from across the world, and objects from Jean-Francois' personal estate in Chennai, it should be spectacular.”
Foster imaginatively paints a picture for us. Some things to whet your imagination of the show and Lesage’s and Schoenfelder’s parts in it – rooms full of shining pearl columns, fabric covered walls, and velvet, sapphire blue draperies everywhere, which welcome you.
Trousseau treasures
Today’s bride is owned by one designer. Sabyasachi Mukherjee. He believes he must do something to counsel them even in the post-marriage period. Give her everything she and her better half will need to be great party hosts.
The new Trousseau is not just clothes, it’s even homecare. The crockery, the cutlery and the tablecloth that work to entertain well. In collaboration with Thomas Goode & Co, ‘The Sabyasachi for Thomas Goode’ collection will be out for purview at the show.
Hand-painted dinnerware, glasses, table linen and other dining accessories will do up the collection. Every piece in the collection has been thought through, and it is the designer’s dream that these are things a bride will pass down to her daughter.
The flowers, beasts, and the myths and legends embossed on each piece by around 43 artists from the designer’s own art foundation will show us how the British never really left India. Sabyasachi’s hometown, the city of poets, authors and now recently Nobel Prize winners, Kolkata, has provided stimulus to this assemblage.
Being inspired by the days of the Raj was of course only incidental. If a bride thinks about buying these, she can do so in style, with Thomas Goode’s haute shipping case as a carrier of the trousseauwear.
