Design Intervention
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Most artisans have a historical archive of designs/ patterns that have been handed down to them through generations. India has the largest number of traditional craftsmen in the world. My job was to make their work relevant and accessible to a larger audience. For example, when I started my tryst with artisans in 1992, the traditional block printers of Rajasthan had truly little work. At the time, Anokhi, Soma and Brigitte Singh were working with the block printers, who were executing their designs. The traditional block printers were dwindling. As a part of Fabindia, I worked with 6 different styles of block printers and helped them develop new ideas based on their traditional blocks. They started getting orders from our buyers and slowly they could scale up their production capacity. Each printer maintained his unique identity and today their children continue to follow their parents’ footsteps.
I stopped working at Fabindia in 2007 but continued as a design consultant. I worked mostly with artisans, training them to up their skill sets for new emerging markets.
