Category: SUTA Store
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The first few conversations around imagining a space for Suta stirred up memories of our early encounters with sarees. Watching with awe as our mothers draped, the numerous visits to Bangalore’s old saree markets on the occasion of an uncle’s wedding, shops that welcomed you with mattresses on the floor, yellowing newspaper lined shelves and lemon sherbets on hot sunday afternoons. So too the hand painted store names and the texture of Kadappa stones worn smooth by bare feet. The saree is an ubiquitous object of so many memories. As we waded through these memories, we thought of other familiar crafts in and around our homes and streets. We began to write, share and live these stories, hunting now, for the makers of these craft, keepers of these objects, and the methods to these materials.
The design of the store comes together in equal measures, from fond memories of spaces and objects of everyday life that were made by hand. Objects that were either treasured around the house, or used so much that they were worn smooth and layered with a patina of love. We went back to the courtyard houses of our aunts, and asked her to pull out her silk sarees from her brass bureau. Laughing, she recounted stories of our youth, as she spilled the gold of her memories and of her sarees on the padasaale (platform around a sunken court). We looked again at the familiar wooden columns against which our grandma lent on. Our eyes feasted on everything wood that had been used so much that its grime had ebonized into a lacquer of age and importance.
The design of the store comes together again in equal parts from our hunt for the makers of these objects of every day our memory, as well as collectors and curators of these objects. Our journey from our own homes took us to temple stone carvers, brass beaters, wood sculptors and restoration carpentry of antique wooden beams and columns! With each visit became apparent: a community of makers who are connected to their materials, their craft, their people and their land.
Making of the brass beeru.The suta store features spaces that seem familiar in the context of sarees. A hasige katte, or a mattress platform invites you to pull sarees off the shelf and spread it out to see its intricate prints. Old wood salvaged from beams and columns of demolished houses are repurposed as racks and hangers for the store. Kattes or platforms rise and fall through the space. Sometimes it is made of raw rammed earth, layered with streaks of lime. Sometimes the familiar surface of an oxide floor wraps up to become a katte. Sometimes to sit or sometimes for trays of trinket or jewellery.
The traditional katte or platform expressed in rammed earth for the store.
Polished Lime Plasters for the walls, in colours from our memories.
Un-touched columns, reclaimed from old houses ,are cleaned, oiled and placed around the store. Familiar natural stones like kadappa, ubiquitous from memory, lay out paths within the store. All walls are plastered in lime, smooth to the touch, and infinite in its visual nuances. The ceiling is painted in pigmented clay paints, and oiled. The space comes together as a series of rooms, perhaps familiar, as you navigate between the wants and needs of your visit to the saree shop.
As fragments of our memories came together in the form of a craft, in the form of an object, a surface, a material, a story, a person or sometimes even a relationship, we were wrapped in a space that felt as familiar and as comfortable as one of ammas comfortably worn saree.
Location: Indiranagar, Bangalore
Client: Suta Bombay
Type Of Project : Retail Interior design
Date : 2022
Floor area : 260 m2
Design & Production team: Shruthi Ramakrishna, Jeremie Gaudin, Agnimitra Bachi, Niranjana Madan, Jeyshri Chandrasekaran, Kushal N, Hemanth Gowda, Muthu Nayak, Govindraju, Sundaram, Arul, Anwar.
Materials & Techniques : Rammed Earth, Natural Lime Plasters, Pigmented concrete, Polished Oxide Flooring (IPS), Brass, Reclaimed Wood.
Contractor/execution : Spatien Ventures Pvt Ltd
Installation of Rammed Earth & Natural Finishes : Made in Earth Collective & Earthly Yours
Furniture : Quriocity Shop, Bangalore
Photography & Video : Shruthi Ramakrishna, Niranjana Madan