I went MIA for nearly two months and I owe you an explanation.

I spent a month and a half in India (I know, it’s a looong time) and I came back with a camera roll full of motifs and an exciting launch happening next week.

I kid you not, I planned the visit mainly because I missed my family but I’m not very good at switching off, so the plan quietly turned into a work trip too.

The first stop was our framing unit.

We’ve been making Tanjore paintings for more than 25 years, and over that time we’ve worked on thousands of paintings, each in a custom size. That meant we needed an in-house team for framing.

Our teak frames are still hand-assembled and made to order and Mum has been running the unit for years. This time I got to watch the whole process, step by step, and I finally understood that every single part of a painting (even the humble frame) takes time and patience, and that time is what makes it the best.

While I was there we tried other mediums and styles for our frames, and I’m so, so excited to launch them next week.

Then it was Thanjavur.

My husband had never been to Thanjavur and that had to be fixed, so we planned a trip. We went to the birthplace of Tanjore painting, and standing there as a family trying to take this art form to a global stage was honestly so healing.

I also made full use of the temple visits and went motif hunting. Our paintings are based on traditional designs. Only some of those designs are available online and for the sake of authenticity we wanted to go in person and see the motifs for our backgrounds ourselves. I walked out of every temple with more ideas and my gallery filled up fast. It was truly the best kind of field work.

Mum and I got straight into experimenting with styles and mediums the moment we got back. A new collection is coming (hint hint)

Now to the less glamorous part.
I spent a lot of time sourcing materials for the new collection and the workshops, coordinating custom cut-outs and printing. The custom bags ran late, as things do.

I used to panic when something got delayed but one year into the business it’s become second nature. You work around it and still get things done, and that’s one of the most useful skills this business has taught me.

Then, for a short break, we went to Kerala. I’ll admit it wasn’t much of a break because I spent most of the time learning the different styles of Kerala murals.

I also saw Raja Ravi Varma’s work in person for the first time and came back even more inspired. I believe that being exposed to more art forms gives us the chance to carry them forward and that can’t be done from a screen.

And the food. I won’t pretend I didn’t plan parts of the trip around it, haha.

That’s a glimpse of the work behind a collection. There’s research, there are field visits, and there are a lot of long conversations. We could take a shortcut and borrow ideas from the internet, but where’s the fun in that?

We owe you a collection that’s been curated, and we’ll do whatever it takes to deliver it.

The motifs are in the camera roll now and being worked into our collection, and the frames launch next week. Follow along on socials to see what comes next