A Surreal Design Montage

In one of the recent design conferences in Chennai, the gentleman from Yanko Design asked, “tell me what is Indian design, like you have Italian Design, German Design and others who have distinct terms or adjectives associated”. I said to him, “now this is a big question or rather intriguing thought!!”

While starting to write this article for Paperworld 2013, Germany, of which this is an extract, it was Diwali time in India, the festival of lights and New Year for the business community in India. The flavour of ‘Indianess’ if I call it can be seen in traditionally made products such as the accounts book for Diwali. It’s called Chopda Puja, a practise of opening a new accounts book on this festival day and making the first entry. The use of cloth on the cover is centuries old, typical to many ritual texts and books.  Like in any other culture, textile the most visible and used product would I believe reveal the attributes of design in its variety of forms and context. Design in the modern, western world sense which started as a movement, ideologies such as anti-machine vis-à-vis machine aesthetics that eventually unified at the Bauhaus never happened in India in that sense. A few schools of design took birth in early 60s which brought in this thought of which you find influences in a few products, communication media, furniture, etc from the designers trained from these schools. Today there are over 30 institutions teaching design and fashion styled in the lines of western models, thanks to globalisation!

The Indian design idiom is being deliberated upon by many academics and experimented by professional practitioners. The industry is slowing imbibing the idea of visual sophistication, thinking and style popular internationally into their products.

If you ask a middle aged man say working in Govt. bank as to why he bought a kind of sofa set for his house, he would say, ‘it looks rich and grand, sturdy, and long lasting’. The typical Indian consumer though simple in taste is aspirational, rooted in societal status. Historically products, spaces and architecture have been hierarchical as per the status of individuals in the community. The ornamentation and degree of its richness continues to be a strong attribute of high aspirational value for a common consumer in India. Modern design therefore would have a different interpretation in the Indian context.

Design in India maybe is embedded in its culture. The traditional and contemporary coexist.  The urban and rural landscape or people-scape on one canvas would reveal abundant use of colour, patterns, motifs in the cloths, homes, etc. The juxtaposition and use of these elements in my view is mostly intuitive, celebrative and bold in nature. Here I would like to give an example of the oldest garments, the sari for women and dhoti for men. If you ask a young 35 year old why she bought a particular sari, in all probability she would say, I don’t have this ‘design’. This maybe would lead us to our search for design in India how textile in India which is abundant in use and diverse in surface design could reveal the story.

The unstitched garment as Prof Kumar Vyas calls it, a sari is made in a variety of patterns, motifs and weaves which greatly signify design unique to India. When the young lady said design she meant:  the border pattern, the colour scheme, the rich and detailed surface work done on the pallu (the extending drape of elegance and modesty), the texture, the material (silk or cotton or tusser, chiffon) and the most important consideration, the region it comes from like Kacheepuram or Banaras or Pochampalli added with the unique style of the weavers (many of them have a GI).  In contrast to this the Dhoti for men is predominately white in colour with a red, green, blue or gold zari border. This illustrates the meaning of design to majority of Indian people, in a way! Design that is decorative in an aesthetic way, has value, traditionally modern and has choice of colours, sober and vibrant and is comfortable to wear.

Take a glimpse of any part of India and you would see the traditional yet modern, classical yet contemporary, vernacular yet International design alongside everywhere leaving the viewer dizzy and overwhelmed.

Author: Ravishankar, Edit by: Pallavi Thakur