Actress Deepika Padukone regal appearance in bright red banarasi kanjeevaram silk saree embellished with zari weaved rich buttas comes around the saree border followed by embroidery border teamed with matching blouse she finished out the look with heavy kundan polki choker with matching earrings. designed by sabyasachi.
About Sabyasachi Mukherjee:
Sabyasachi Mukherjee has a way of telling stories. Take for instance his latest collaborative project with Nilaya, a subsidiary of Asian Paints that creates wall coverings. The Sabyasachi for Nilaya collection has several prints in each of the five stories of the collection, namely: India Baroque, Makhmal, Jodhpur, Spice Route and Varanasi. The average fan of the Sabyasachi aesthetic will no doubt be eager to refurbish one’s home given the optimum timeline of the upcoming festive season but the story behind the artful wallpapers goes much deeper than ornate decor.
The artwork for each of the wallpapers is hand-rendered by artists of the Sabyasachi Art Foundation. “My sister and I started the Sabyasachi Art Foundation last year. My mother was an artist in Bengal in the ’70s and she never spoke English because she went to a Bengali-medium school. In the art world, if you can’t market yourself it can get a bit intimidating, so she didn’t really pursue her passion. Then she had us and we became very successful, so I guess there’s a little regret that she resigned herself to being a housewife. I think both me and my sister have been playing with a little guilt that our mother had to give up everything to raise us. So we decided that when we have a voice of our own in society we would do something for her. So we started the art foundation to do something for people like her,” says the designer.
The art foundation handpicks struggling artists from all across Bengal and offers room and board and mentoring along with a stipend. “They are usually in the wrong jobs—some obscure agency somewhere, where they work for four or five thousand rupees, so we give them a sustainable salary and set up a studio with all the paint, canvases and medium they want so they can spend about 50 per cent of their time creating art that we can exhibit for them and 50 per cent of the time to create something that we can use for my company,” says Mukherjee. This is the first time work created by the artists has been showcased on a commercial scale.
“I spoke to Asian Paints and requested the best printer in the world, and they made it happen. We created very large life-sized artworks so the imperfections are contained in them and not tiled, and then found somebody who could scan them and put them on a very organic substrate to make it look like wallpaper that’s probably done on hand paper to give it a very old-world, vintage feel. Despite the look and feel, it’s all waterproof and fireproof, and looks high-maintenance but it’s not—that’s where the technology comes in.”
The collection has been divided into different groups and stories, the first one being India Baroque, which is a celebration of north Calcutta. “A lot of people would use India Baroque in its entirety but some would do just a wall. One of my favourite cities in India is Jodhpur, so this collection is done in shades of indigo. Spice Route is about Indian folklore, fables, theJataka Tales, the Panchatantra; it’s for someone who uses a lot of Gujarati handcrafts in their home. Varanasi is inspired by the Varanasi brocades and their colours. Varanasi has a belt called peeli kothi, where all the saris are woven, so we wanted to introduce a bit of yellow in the collection. The last part of the story is Makhmal, which is velvet flocking. All old zamindar houses and nautch ghars used to have velvet because it was the fabric of royalty, so the collection is more opulent.”
“My customer base runs in thousands but the Asian Paints customer base runs in millions. When you have such a large demographic in the country, you have to design something for everyone. I wanted to also do strong non-commercial colours, besides the commercial colours, for everything ranging from homes to hotels.”
If you’ve visited a Sabyasachi store, his love for interiors would come as no surprise. “I think the sensibility of my stores is catching on—I see a lot of restaurants copying my aesthetic, I see old plates and deer heads and wall clocks and they say to me, ‘We came to your Kala Ghoda store and tried to recreate it.’ I think I am more of a home designer than a fashion designer. I’ve always liked doing homes but I got so consumed by fashion I never got the chance. I did a very beautiful project for the Taj in London, called the Cinema Suite, which was inaugurated by Mr [Amitabh] Bachchan. A lot of celebrities have visited it. This was also a part of the Art Foundation projects.”
Mukherjee plans on creating his home line in the future. He also has a culture foundation in the pipeline. “I’m a quintessential businessman; new retail is all going to be about what is handmade, what is lost, what smacks of culture. I think digitised retail will pave the way for something that is more organic so people who have stories to tell will be the next batch of entrepreneurs. Why not ride on the wave?” Surfboard.
About Sabyasachi Mukherjee:
Sabyasachi Mukherjee has a way of telling stories. Take for instance his latest collaborative project with Nilaya, a subsidiary of Asian Paints that creates wall coverings. The Sabyasachi for Nilaya collection has several prints in each of the five stories of the collection, namely: India Baroque, Makhmal, Jodhpur, Spice Route and Varanasi. The average fan of the Sabyasachi aesthetic will no doubt be eager to refurbish one’s home given the optimum timeline of the upcoming festive season but the story behind the artful wallpapers goes much deeper than ornate decor.
The artwork for each of the wallpapers is hand-rendered by artists of the Sabyasachi Art Foundation. “My sister and I started the Sabyasachi Art Foundation last year. My mother was an artist in Bengal in the ’70s and she never spoke English because she went to a Bengali-medium school. In the art world, if you can’t market yourself it can get a bit intimidating, so she didn’t really pursue her passion. Then she had us and we became very successful, so I guess there’s a little regret that she resigned herself to being a housewife. I think both me and my sister have been playing with a little guilt that our mother had to give up everything to raise us. So we decided that when we have a voice of our own in society we would do something for her. So we started the art foundation to do something for people like her,” says the designer.
The art foundation handpicks struggling artists from all across Bengal and offers room and board and mentoring along with a stipend. “They are usually in the wrong jobs—some obscure agency somewhere, where they work for four or five thousand rupees, so we give them a sustainable salary and set up a studio with all the paint, canvases and medium they want so they can spend about 50 per cent of their time creating art that we can exhibit for them and 50 per cent of the time to create something that we can use for my company,” says Mukherjee. This is the first time work created by the artists has been showcased on a commercial scale.
“I spoke to Asian Paints and requested the best printer in the world, and they made it happen. We created very large life-sized artworks so the imperfections are contained in them and not tiled, and then found somebody who could scan them and put them on a very organic substrate to make it look like wallpaper that’s probably done on hand paper to give it a very old-world, vintage feel. Despite the look and feel, it’s all waterproof and fireproof, and looks high-maintenance but it’s not—that’s where the technology comes in.”
The collection has been divided into different groups and stories, the first one being India Baroque, which is a celebration of north Calcutta. “A lot of people would use India Baroque in its entirety but some would do just a wall. One of my favourite cities in India is Jodhpur, so this collection is done in shades of indigo. Spice Route is about Indian folklore, fables, theJataka Tales, the Panchatantra; it’s for someone who uses a lot of Gujarati handcrafts in their home. Varanasi is inspired by the Varanasi brocades and their colours. Varanasi has a belt called peeli kothi, where all the saris are woven, so we wanted to introduce a bit of yellow in the collection. The last part of the story is Makhmal, which is velvet flocking. All old zamindar houses and nautch ghars used to have velvet because it was the fabric of royalty, so the collection is more opulent.”
“My customer base runs in thousands but the Asian Paints customer base runs in millions. When you have such a large demographic in the country, you have to design something for everyone. I wanted to also do strong non-commercial colours, besides the commercial colours, for everything ranging from homes to hotels.”
If you’ve visited a Sabyasachi store, his love for interiors would come as no surprise. “I think the sensibility of my stores is catching on—I see a lot of restaurants copying my aesthetic, I see old plates and deer heads and wall clocks and they say to me, ‘We came to your Kala Ghoda store and tried to recreate it.’ I think I am more of a home designer than a fashion designer. I’ve always liked doing homes but I got so consumed by fashion I never got the chance. I did a very beautiful project for the Taj in London, called the Cinema Suite, which was inaugurated by Mr [Amitabh] Bachchan. A lot of celebrities have visited it. This was also a part of the Art Foundation projects.”
Mukherjee plans on creating his home line in the future. He also has a culture foundation in the pipeline. “I’m a quintessential businessman; new retail is all going to be about what is handmade, what is lost, what smacks of culture. I think digitised retail will pave the way for something that is more organic so people who have stories to tell will be the next batch of entrepreneurs. Why not ride on the wave?” Surfboard.
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