Visits to Jaipur may never be the same again. One step inside Anantaya, the niche stockist of gorgeous contemporary artefacts, located in a tree lined street of the pink city, is enough to make anyone part with their plastic. Generously. The brainchild of Ayush Kasliwal, an industrial furniture design graduate of the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, Anantaya is a concept design studio (and store) that explores and exhibits the talent of brilliant craftsmen around the country. Now 40, Kasliwal set up Anantaya in 2007-8, with the aim to revive traditional crafts and materials with the design sensibility to suit contemporary urban Indian lifestyle.
He named his company Anantaya after his two daughters —Ananya and Tanaya. “But interestingly enough, it is a Sanskrit word that means unending,” explains Kasliwal. “There is an endless tale of traditional crafts, an endless endeavour of design and innovation, an endless journey of making things that are not just beautiful but also beautifully fit into your lifestyle.” Kasliwal started the company with a seed capital of `1 lakh. Today, it has a turnover of `14 crore. ‘There were two reasons that made me set up Anantaya in Jaipur. This is my city. My family lives here and I didn’t want to live anywhere else. Secondly, after I studied at NID, there were no jobs available. There were no furniture companies in India at that point of time. So I decided to make furniture for exporting,” explains Kasliwal.
Gradually, the designer and his wife Gitanjali, an architect, decided to compliment his existing business by venturing locally. “I wanted to work with craftsmen here, and start designing handcrafted products and control them at the retail end. If we could make and sell abroad, why not sell in our country?” says Kasliwal. Anantaya is a cultural enterprise and is committed to the development of products that has roots in India. “Through this brand we create strong cultural products like our version of the thali, or the shiva copper jug,” says Kasliwal. The peppermills, for instance, have been inspired by the Lutyens architecture in Delhi and make a political statement of sorts. “The shape of the product is inspired by the monuments, and by twisting the neck to grind the pepper, I thought it would be a fun interpretation of reeling the necks of our politicians.” Kasliwal makes it look and sound easy but that’s far from the truth. The peppermill alone took him over three years to make. “We kept changing it after finalising it until I went to Denmark to find the right sort of ceramic mechanism that would grind the seeds smoothly,” he says. Another reason why products take time to evolve is finding the right sort of employees and motivating them. “We support local craft traditions and technologies by providing capital, technology, design and marketing interventions, which at the same time showcase the uniqueness of the state and its crafts people,” he says.
Kasliwal and his crew in Jaipur are always on the prowl across the country to find the best artisans, understand the importance of preservation of traditional crafts as well as the need to innovate. “Using unusual yet traditional materials and processes, we put a fresh twist to designs that encompass a wide range of accessories, textiles, lighting solutions and everything that comes under the gamut of home décor. Everything that we make at Anantaya has a story behind it as we are representing Indian sensibilities in a contemporary concept. Playing around with traditional crafts and innovative concepts, we develop products that are not just pretty, but are intelligent too,” he says. Clearly, Kasliwal is aiming for the discerning, well-heeled peripatetic Indian traveller with an eye for something quirky.
The second brand that he has created is AKFD (Ayush Kasliwal Furniture Design). “The thought behind AKFD is to create products meant to live the way we live. We want to create furniture that reinvents the way we live.” Take, for instance, the Asan chair that they showcased at the recent BeOpen exhibit in Delhi. The sleek chair has skinny legs cast in aluminium with a fleshy seat and back. It works perfectly for sitting cross-legged or even folding one leg and having the other dangling. “We want to create products that revolve around how we live,” explains Kasliwal. Another interesting accessory that he has designed is the charging table. “We always forget our chargers, so we thought why not make a table with all the plug points,’ says Kasliwal who is a huge fan of Scandinavian/Danish design. “I love the way how they put their materials together and how humane their furniture is,” he says.
So what’s next for Kasliwal? The New York Design Week, for starters, later this month. A store in Bangalore to extend his reach to the south. Another interesting collaboration on the anvil is the new venture titled AKMD (Ayush Kasliwal Mike Dreeden). “Dreeden came to Jaipur as a Fulbright scholar to work with rickshawwallas,” says Kasliwal. “We met by chance a few years ago and have been friends ever since. Given our distinct design ideas, we thought we should collaborate and create a furniture brand to sell overseas,” says Kasliwal. “We bring two different types of imaginations for one product. So the final product turns out to be something very interesting, and very different to what we originally started off to create.” Not a bad way to show off India to the rest of the world.