Featured : Hindustan Times Mint

Part of a blogger feature carried by Live Mint this past weekend... Ways to use and display old textiles bags.  I convert a few into cushions, putting them to use when I am not using them as bags.

Mirror worked, appliquéd, hand dyed,  traditional cloth bags are a ubiquitous fashion and practical accessory from every where.  Most of us  have a few lying about the house. Sometimes even the textile shopping bags one gets at cotton clothing stores these days are so hard to ignore !  (Anokhi, Fab India and Cotton's Jaipur dole out lovely eco-friendly , reusable, fabric shopping bags).. Here is a way to  use  them all - heirloom, high street or plain free.

Above: appliqued indigo dyded bag from Vietnam gets used as a head rest stuffed with old Tshirts and random scraps. The roughly put together stitches can be ripped open in a second, when one feels like putting the same to another  use, like as a  real bag perhaps?!

An old shopping bag from Cottons Jaipur, stuffed with a filler and embellished with pom poms and ghungroos..

An old  beauty from Kutch that used to be my Go to bag while in college,  used as a cushion somedays :)

The whole ensemble of cushions and textiles displayed in different  corners of the house. A casual seating area  in the living room in the above instance.
Hand made things are usually easy to throw together, as  even drastically different styles tend to work well together.   It is a good idea to balance the  scheme by combining solid coloured textiles with patterned textiles. Usually using different patterns used creating  different techniques- weave, embroidery, and prints  helps create a rich and attractive end result.

A big thank you to Komal Sharma from Mint for the feature :) ..Its particularly exciting to share the same space as Bhavna (of An Indian Summer) and Rajee (of  Rajeesood )  

Wall stories : Paint

Posting an update about this weekend's exertions.  Paint. The good news is that  colour being the last stage of a interior project means the whole deal is finally in its last leg. However this to me is the hardest phase,  too many decisions,  much procrastination and too much confusion. 

We finished testing shades on most walls finally.. Positing the colour palette for the house.

Entrance 

Family / TV area

 One wall in the living room is going to be just short of shocking pink ! ( I know I've lost it totally, but this had to be done once in a lifetime  ;) - its a largish wall- the largest in the house and thats a lot of colour.. fingers crossed :))

African Mud and black colours

We want a verrrry Red Red, was the brief from the girls .. they got their wish ! The plan is to balance the red with a buff coloured wall in the same room also

Lime green and blue for the boy.. I thought my years were ringing when he said `cerulean'.. I want a cerulean blue.. :)

Thats all for today folks.. Am off for a short break.. Will be back with more news from the house end of next week ! DO leave your comments and feedback.. ! I want somebody to dissuade me from going pink while there is still time!!!

Down but not dirty.

The relative quite  on my desk lately in spite of the enthusiastically penned mission statement earlier, is mostly due to a home project underway at frenzied pace. Yes, am preparing to move yet again... ! Luckily  the move is just to another apartment within the same city.  As the space takes shape over the next few weeks, there will be more to share  until then,  here is a post about ideas. 

Have been engrossed in all manner of things. Floors, flea markets, furniture, paint and the like.
Today's post is going to be about an aspect of home dressing that I never really paid too much heed to until a few weeks ago when rotten parquet became a bone of contention. Three floorings needed to be ripped and relaid.  The humble grounds beneath our feet indeed, only somehow they end up making or  breaking spaces completely.

I grew up in a house  with wildly coloured, wildly patterned mosaic tiles.  My grandfather designed  these himself.  I remember watching him supervise the laying under his strict gaze. This was in the early seventies.  Dadaji, had spent his youth in a Bombay in the throes of art deco craze.  Only  later when I moved to the city myself and saw things up close did it become clear  to me where his love for elaborate mosaic tiles and checkerboard floors came from!

Mumbai or elsewhere, go looking for floors and you will come across a barrage of jargon,  Moroccan, Italian, marble, heritage, Athanguddi, Azulejos, stone, ceramic, sandstone, composite, Jaipur, chevron, mosaic, terrazzo, painted, inverlochy. There is just too much to choose from.

Having lost much sleep over a wide range of choices,  I finally know what I am going to do with the rotten parquet.. It is impossible to list my entire reference file here, but will share ideas and inspirations I have picked up along the way in today's post.  I don't have particularly  pretty pictures of floors  tiles and the like, for those you need to head to pinterest, which is rife with stunning effects! These are mostly humble records I made with my iPhone for my reference, while scouring the markets and else where.

Hopefully  with the final finished product which will make a future post and this one, it will be possible to piece together a picture of how exactly the ideas translated to actual floors.

A final word about the inspiration :  The choices I made rest on three different factors, first- the relatively tiny budget, second- somehow ideas registered from travels or surfing the net etc muscled their way in (not just on the floors but rampantly and randomly in other corners too ! More about that later though ) Finally, from in and around Mumbai- my forever Muse!! 


Starting with the city it self. I  am taken by old Mumbai  Heritage floors....

Encaustic tiles in an old Mumbai building

Visit any old Mumbai building and you  are sure to notice the  'Mintons'. Richly patterned, startlingly  coloured and beautifully weathered encaustic cement tiles imported to the erst while Bombay Presidency by Liverpool based Minton's Ltd.
In production since the 12th century when  Cisterician Monks in England  hand made  them to pave  floors of European churches and monasteries- the art vanished a few 100 years down the road.  During the 1830s  several British firms  attempted to revive  the medieval art, one of the most successful  being Herbert Minton.

Most old buildings in Fort and neighbouring areas in Mumbai boast these striking tiles from bygone times..  

These are cement tiles in which the pattern or figure on the surface is not a product of the glaze but of different colors of clay. A tile may be composed of as many as six colours. The pattern is inlaid into the body of the tile, so that the design remains as the tile is worn down. These may be gazed or unglazed and the inlay may be shallow  as an eight of an inch, or as deep as  a quarter inch.

Recently restored tiles on stairs, gallery and corner,  Mumbai.

In  the initial years of  the British colonial period, the  tiles would be imported from England. Until they started to be manufactured locally in the early 1920s. They remained in manufacture until the 1940s. In the recent years,  a few tile makers based in Mumbai and elsewhere have  revived the old style of floorings.

Minton tiles on the landing of the grand staircase of a Museum in Mumbai.

Layers of vinyl peel exposing the  striking original Minton  floor in a crumbling building in Kala Ghoda, Mumbai.

Then there are good ol'  Ceramic tiles ...

Reference  image taken at a tile shop in Fort, Mumbai

Brightly colored, readily available and easy to lay. Add to it, the wide range of tiles and makes to choose from to suit all manner of tastes and decor.

 I chanced upon a stash of these old furniture tiles from Gujarat at a local flea market the other day.. (picture below). I have no idea about their vintage, make and  style etc.. From the look of it, they look like Portuguese inspired, the kind I have spotted in many a old Mumbai buildings. Do enlighten me if you have any idea about these.  

Hand glazed furniture tiles, from a flea market, Mumbai

                     

I am not quite sure about where these will go in the house at this stage.

Finally  getting back to my childhood home, I would like to do a spin on the traditional chequered black  and white with a Chevron pattern floor somewhere in the house..

 Wide V's of the Chevron  on the floor of a Colaba restaurant, Mumbai

Vibrant, contrasting patterns from a heritage hotel in Rajasthan.

Old chequered floor  in an old Mumbai building.

Blueprint

In February this year, I would have completed five years of blogging. Each year around this time, I'd think about the blog with an intention of evaluating the space and my motivations. What does it mean to blog? Why a blog? why about homes? Whose home? Mine? Others- These and  other questions I did not articulate to myself very well in the beginning.
What to say?  How to say?  Will there be stuff to talk about all the time? will people read?

Each  time I tried to pin down the answers,  other important distractions veered me off  course.  Only this year, I am going to do it!
Before January gets by and this baby is already  Februaryish ripe and passing.  Here is the first post of the year. A little late perhaps but  other things have been kept waiting. Hopefully there will be  lots of posts  and much to share in the successive months of 2013, but it all begins with this mission statement of sorts.

When I started, this is all I could think the blog was going to be about :

"Inside. homes. life. kitchen. photography. stories. outside. journeys. travel. meandering. constructions-deconstructions."

Random. Just a broad list of topics. "Kitchen capers" ?!! did I really say that?  Does it get more superficial than that ?

--When with the benefit of hindsight, I can already say that what has come off the journey has been anything but!.

With a little more thought, here is what it is:

A document about home- mine and others I encounter. Home as a shelter that houses, families, people, hopes, dreams, aspirations. The aesthetics and practical matters that go into making it home.  
Not so much life as ways of living- the cultural, aesthetic and art of living. That would include traditions, cultures,  arts and crafts.

Why people build? how they build? Cities that are threaded together by many homes, buildings, structures, and spaces in general. And because  the private and public are interconnected,  markets, bazaars, gardens, museums- pretty much wherever serendipity leads. So journeys near and far.

The past and  the present. Histories, traditions that ought to inform and empower.
All of that and also kitchen capers...;)  and other capers of  sane and insane variety is what this blog is all about..!

As for the psychology,  dramas, laughter, blood, tears and dreams that also go into making homes, will leave most of that out, most of the time :) -   that makes the girl in the girlabouthome a bit of a nonentity.. but its better that way.

About me?  I am a drifter. Always running from this and that..Escape with me. If you like a particular escapade, leave me a line, am always up for a conversation... so I will revert no matter what.

Apart from that I am also a photographer and writer. Love cities- my current affair with Mumbai well into the third year.. I do all the things that avid city lovers do- walk around, connect with one neighbourhood or the other regularl, photograph, read and learn something about the place every day.  A lot of my city stories spill on to my other blog : Girlabouttown...

This major task out of my way..promise to be back to the business of updating the blog the fastest I can... If for some reason my wanderings lead me astray for intervals, please bear with me..  Although I tend to go off radars every now and then, I do almost always come back!

The old and the new

Much is being said about the modern Indian design idiom. One that hand picks from rich, age old traditions and combines them with contemporary western influences, with dramatic yet non fussy and uncluttered results.

This striking of a fine balance between the old and the new,  to lend an impression of  careful yet casual approach to living spaces, takes plenty of effort and dexterity. The designer/ architect needs to be in constant  touch with the past with an eye to the future. It is a way by which the past techniques are successfully preserved for some more time to come, rather than merely sink into redundancy. On most occasions,  the same is achieved through  enlisting the help of local master craftsmen and builders. Compiling a few vignettes from traditional Indian ways of dressing spaces.  The few images in todays post are from Rajasthan- a state steeped in rich architectural traditions and history not only well preserved but actively and delightfully appropriated in the context of revived and newer buildings.

Consider the use of a variety of unfinished and partially restored wall finishes to dress up this corner in  a rennovated fort in Udaipur (above).  Traditional wall finishes such as old tiles, painting, inlay and relief work  mingles with newer, irreverent addition of  finely scrawled urdu in places on a partially restored wall. The patina of aged wood and intense colours of a cotton leheriya bolster fabric contrasts with the carefully maintained impression of age set against the old and new wall.

Framed jharokha, and partially restored walls and tile work give a traditional dimension to this private nook of  a restored old fort.

Newly planted Plantain trees throw intense shadows on a traditional yet minimal wall.

An old elephant set with its intense colours, inlay work and gentle relief work is the only adornment in a mostly open, white minimal space .

Christmas Cheer

Warmest wishes for a lovely Christmas folks !!

 

 

 The light of  two dozen candles arranged at varying heights glow through a silk blind from atop a table arranged in the middle of the room.

 

 

 

 The floral pattern visible through soft gold twinkling lights.

 

 

Antique, wooden candle stands arranged randomly

 

 

Reflections on the polished granite

 

The arrangement reflects into a door and life sized mirror at another end of the room.

 

All pictures were taken at the Oberoi Udaivilas, Udaipur .

The way we live : Mud houses of Jaiselmer

A little away from the city enclosed within the honey coloured walls of the Jaiselmer fort, Rajasthan,  lie  tiny little villages lost in the desert wilderness. As opposed to the opulent havelis of the city- some of which are said to be among the most ostentatious in all of Rajasthan - these villages house the local peasant and pastoral communities. In a sharp contrast to most newly built, modern habitats  that scar  the landscape of urban India - ugly haphazard concretized neighbourhoods- these villages with their little mud houses offer   quality housing in resonance with the local climate and needs.

Painted in striking yellow and white lime wash, the mud houses of Jaiselmer take one back in time:  to the earliest forms of human habitation perhaps. Simple  and pertinent, these homes are mostly constructed using adobe and readily available mud mixed with straw and cow dung.
The womenfolk take particular pride in their houses, painting the exterior walls and adorning the interiors with elaborate patterns and designs drawn from local experience. The paint and pattern is renewed each year during the festive season, ensuring bright  and beautified neighbourhoods.

Mud –a resource plentiful in the  region, is malleable  when wet and strong when dry, particularly when mixed with straw and cow dung. It is an easy-to-use, strong, cheap, renewable resource.  The material  helps insulate the buildings against the extremes of summer heat  and winter cold making it a logical choice for the hot- arid local conditions.

With time however, the popularity of  adobe is waning. Each village comprises of a cluster of houses usually interspersed by  an odd flat roofed, concrete structure, called a pucca or permanent dwelling. In the recent years,  concrete- a material  neither suitable for the climate, less eco-friendly and sorely lacking in the aesthetic quality of mud- has gained favour with the local population that sees it as a  status symbol.

Even as  concrete cubes proliferate the rural landscape, it is interesting to note  that most of these  constructions mimic their mud counterparts in essential features (the square house with ample open to sky spaces around) and external adornment !

A cement- brick structure adorned to look like its mud counterparts in Sam village  40 kms from Jaiselmer.

Humble and  non-aspirational as they may be, the mud huts represent  an ancient way of life, living within the environment rather than challenge it. Built by the home owners themselves without  formal architectural inputs, using locally available materials, these lend a distinct character to the villages. A factor that attracts  tourists,  students of architecture, designers and artists  alike.

With the change over to modern sensibility, age old techniques  and traditional know how  are  fading from memory.  Its a tragedy. Compared to busy, bustling chaotic modern developments,  old  habitats such as  the mud houses of Jaiselmer exhibit a  shared aesthetic and  love for elegance and beauty. The visuality of such a neighbourhood is more in the form of a collective choice,  creativity and consciousness.  Is it these choices that  reflect in how clean most of these neighborhoods are..?

An interesting term coined by architect Charles Correa comes to mind.  Describing  rural habitats such as the mud houses,  he uses the words: ' Low energy-high visual'. That is succinct. Responding to the position that -an aesthetic  sense is something  the poor cannot afford- he says-

“Nothing could be further from the truth! Improving our habitats requires visual skills. The poor have always understood this.  With one stroke of a pink brush, a Mexican artist transforms a clay pot. It costs him nothing… And the Arab had only the simplest tools: mud and sky- so he had to be inventive! In the process producing the most glorious oasis towns ever seen. And it is not a coincidence that  the best  handicraft comes from the poorest countries of the world.”