Design sense....do you have it?

“This city has a legacy of textile production, so there’s immense variety of fabrics in the local market, plus there’s a history of both industrial and craft production, karigari. Craftspeople here understand what it means to make export-quality products, and time-based commitments; the city and the craftspeople here are already geared towards that,” he says. Varman is part of a small-sized Ahmedabad-based fashion brigade that includes Shyamal and Bhumika Shodhan and Anuradha Vakil. One of Varman’s essential crafts-partnerships is with 56-year-old Sitaben. An expert at traditional bead embroidery, she learned the craft when she was 16; these two found each other at a crafts bazaar held at NID. When Varman and I visited Sitaben’s home in a traditional Gujarati pol (traditional housing cluster), she chided him for looking so thin, telling him “Tu khaata nahin hain.”

They talked as equals, and she spoke with confidence about her work.

Access to good craftspeople with varied expertise is as crucial to architecture. Soenke Hoof is Doshi’s grandson-in-law and a partner at Vastu Shilpa, which Doshi set up in 1955. Hoof’s entire career has been spent in Ahmedabad since moving from Germany 12 years ago. I asked him if he thought the relationship between designer and artisan is different here. “I’ve only practised in Ahmedabad, though I have worked on projects in other places. Here, I find a craftsman is eager to do a good job because he takes pride in that. In many other cities, that eagerness is missing.” Another designer confided, “Unlike in many other places, a Gujarati craftsman will never take your design and give to another designer.”

(Because I have always been mad about design.)

Read it all here