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to fields as widespread as tourism, graphic design, fashion and intermediate and appropriate technology, and can play a strong part in the combination of economic and cultural oases. Unlike heavily industrialized countries, more than one hundred craft skills are still alive in India, and, when infused with aspiration and accessibility into modern environments, they are thriving and continuously morphing, often under the hands of able professionals in urban design offices and studios everywhere.

From a predominantly agrarian society India is slowly changing and layering, rather than discarding, its old ways of organic farming and manual work, even modernizing traditional wisdoms in health and medicine through technology and science. The belief that natural indigo dyes are good for the skin, or that turmeric is a textile colourant as well as an anti-inflammatory agent in food, or that, altogether, natural dyes are better for the environment—these ideas are being readily accepted internationally. Traditionally, Indian women are experts at recycling, renovating and repurposing. Their quilting of frayed fabrics in kanthas has become an art form, transforming a simple coverlet into a storytelling spread in fine embroidery, the aesthetics of which designers often cannot match. These constitute a valuable knowledge base that can transform the world of design. Particularly in the use of natural materials in interiors, India’s rural structures employ a mixture of clay and lime, while larger palaces and forts have been generous with stone, which acts as a cooling agent in desert areas, with lattices further allowing in breeze. Narrow, shallow water channels ran along corridors to provide a cooling system. Contemporary architecture and interiors in Kerala and Goa employ many old techniques in brick, tile and wood with elements of old balconies as a tribute to a fast-disappearing culture. Even the burnished lime walls, araish, or floors made with crushed eggshells in the mix, make sporadic appearances.

Earlier, crafts skills were employed in interiors of homes to provide many necessary elements of utility. Care needs to be taken today to not make these merely decorative because, in India, any crafted object or aspect of an interior environment has always had a deeper meaning, whether practical or ritualistic. The Indian-ness would become superficial and hollow if designers ignored this aspect.

In Karnataka there is a craft skill in which rosewood is carved and inlayed with patterns, often comprising up to 45 different types of wood, such as mango, jackfruit, rubber and others. Coconut wood is being used by contemporary architects as outer wall cladding or shutters. Mango wood, which is one of the easiest to obtain, is now being processed through technology to make good quality furniture. Similarly, natural materials such as jute and a variety of other wild and cultivated grasses today provide inspiration for cooling partitions and wall cladding. Indian interior designers have great opportunities now to offer truly ecofriendly, cost-effective, natural environments for comfort, ecological and aesthetic reasons, with the added rare element of locally available hand skills.