DESERT CHIC

A love letter to traditional design in Rajasthan.

- Mita Kapur

Jaipur has been my home for over five decades, but I still feel like I’m decoding its many design motifs. It’s been a quest of sorts, ever since I was a child, and my father would take us to the temples and vegetable markets of Johari Bazaar. Even then, I was fascinated by the representations of flower buds and cloves atop buildings; by the wave-like patterns on the tie-dyed leheriya saris of the women selling coriander on their haunches. So much of Rajasthani design, I would later learn, came from block-printers during the Mughal Empire around the 17th century. Designers would take inspiration from their imagination as much as the arid landscape—on a figurative search for water, lushness and plenty. Theirs was a rich technicolour vision of elephants, peacocks and parrots; of lotus flowers, feathers and dancing women. The shapes were as vibrant as the colours: paisley, inspired by the mango; the V-shaped chevrons that you still see on flooring and chhatris; or the circular badroon ka jaal motifs of so many frescoes. These icons have remained in the communal imagination since. For the keen-eyed, they are everywhere, but these are some of my favourite places to explore a contemporary take on traditional Rajasthani design.

JAIPUR

THE JOHRI