A stitch in time

Kaaru is a collaborative enterprise including around 300 indigenous artisans from around India.

Sometimes sheer scale is the defining quality of a creation. So it is with the two installations that Kaaru, a design and architecture firm from New Delhi, has conceived of as backdrop and centre-piece for the annual charity ball of Pratham UK to be held on September 28.

Pratham UK is the English chapter of Pratham, which raises funds and creates awareness about its parent NGO in India, which works in the area of primary education among underprivileged children in India.

Started around 10 years ago by Anjali Wakankar and Sanjib Chatterjee, Kaaru is a collaborative enterprise involving architects, designers, management professionals and around 300 indigenous artists/artisans from across India "" practitioners of such dying craft-forms like the wood inlay of Mysore, the stone inlay of Agra and saanjhi paper-lattice of Mathura, the wooden combs of Bijnour, patachitra of Orissa, mandala bamboo-painting of Madhya Pradesh and so on.

Kaaru's creations include both spaces and products "" large pieces of furniture like tables and beds; coasters, CD-racks, lamps and little knick-knacks about the house "" which combine a very modern design aesthetic with a concern for the ecological devastation caused by the modern assembly-line economy, both on nature and the traditional crafts of India.

Like in all its creations, in the Pratham installations too the two concerns "" social (which in this case would include that of the poor children to whom Pratham is trying to educate) and design "" are fused at the very conceptual level in a way that's not just innovative, it is literal and works powerfully at the symbolical level.

Three traditional Indian crafts "" the tie-and-dye of Kutch, the kaantha embroidery of Bengal and saanjhi jaali-work "" are used in these huge installations, christened Light and The River, which will be put up at the Old Billingsgate Market in London, the venue of the Pratham fund-raiser.

The Grand Hall at Billingsgate is enormous "" it has two halls each measuring 9,000 square feet and rising two floors to 24 feet. So Kaaru's two designer-founders had to come up with something that broke the vault-like monotony of the huge space. "They [the installations] are more architecture than design in the way they deal with space," says Chatterjee.

The Light is actually a giant chandelier, an inverted pyramid of light spanning over 14,000 sqft, and made of 3,000 paper panels, each panel a stencilled paper-cut, fashioned intricately into jaalis. What's interesting is that the paper, a special fire-retardant variety, was sent to 8,000 children in 400 schools run by Pratham to use as copy books. It then went to the master artisans from Mathura and Alwar who hand-cut it.

These paper panels will be fashioned into an inverted pyramid which will be suspended from tensioned cables of the ceiling of Billingsgate's Grand Hall, and back-lit by a system of ceiling-mounted lights. It took 45 days of conceptualisation and prototyping to develop the installation which will be put up on site in six hours.

The River was another grand feat, and it involved Chatterjee and Wakankar travelling all over Kutch and Bolpur district, liasing with 600 women artisans in 12 villages. The River is actually a huge tapestry which will run all through the roof of one hall, rendered in 1,000 metres of black-and-white hand-embroidered fabric, which has two components "" a tie-dye patchwork with 3,50,000 hand-sewn mirrors through which runs a white "river", a wave embroidered in kantha stitch.

Interestingly, this too has something from Pratham "" the fabric for the tie-and-dye actually came from Pratham families all over India, which was then cut and sewn in an applique pattern. This installation too is lit from underneath so that the space below is covered with tiny points of light reflected from the mirrors.

While the scale required of the project was the principal challenge for Kaaru's founders, both Wakankar and Chatterjee say they've been humbled by the generosity of the children and the families who also contributed to the project. Interestingly, Kaaru took the trouble to explain to the children exactly what it was that they were engaging with.

Similarly, the women artisans were briefed on the project. And the stamp of this knowledge, of hands and hearts touching can be seen all over the installations. The colours and scribblings of the children peep through the intricately-cut paper panels; the lines of the embroidery have a life of their own, they aren't symmetrical.

"We've kept this quality, working around it in our designs and not insisting that they re-do along precise lines," says Wakankar. "Indeed, that's become the essence of this collaborative project."