The Craft
House of Falguni works in a small number of Indian crafts and returns to them. Each was chosen because it produces something a machine cannot, and because there are still people alive who know how to do it.
Block Printछपाई
Origin
Wooden block printing reached the Indian subcontinent well before the Mughal period and settled into regional traditions that had little to do with one another. Two towns thirty kilometres apart in Rajasthan went in opposite directions: Bagru worked in dabu, a mud resist, over earthy madder and indigo, while Sanganer built its reputation on fine direct printing, delicate floral repeats laid straight onto a white ground. Kutch and Sindh developed Ajrakh, printed in indigo for the communities who wore it as turban and lungi. Madhubani carried folk narrative rather than geometry. Each belonged to particular families, and in many cases the block carver and the printer were different households entirely.
Technique
A printer works down a length of cloth pressing one block, lifting, moving along, pressing again. There is a registration mark cut into the corner of the block to align against, but the judgement is made by eye and hand. Over six metres that is several hundred decisions, and a fraction of a millimetre of drift on each accumulates into a repeat that breathes. Ajrakh compounds this. It is resist rather than a single printing, so the cloth passes through washing, printing, dyeing and drying more than a dozen times, with a separate block for every layer. The indigo and madder respond to water temperature and weather, so two runs of the same design in different months are not the same colour.
Our work
We print on modal silk rather than the cotton the tradition assumes, which changes how the dye sits and how the cloth falls. The offcuts from that printing become jewellery rather than waste.
Ikatइकत
Origin
Ikat is a resist technique with no single home. It appears as mengikat in the Malay archipelago, kasuri in Japan, mudmee in Thailand, and in flame-patterned silks in Europe. In India it developed independently across regions that had no contact with one another: Patola in Patan, Telia Rumal and Pochampally in the Deccan, Sambalpuri in Odisha. Gujarat holds the most demanding version. Patola is double ikat, warp and weft both resist-dyed, and a single sari can take months.
Technique
The dyer measures out the warp, works out where every element of the finished design will fall, and binds those sections so tightly that dye cannot reach them. The bundle is dipped, dried, unbound, rebound differently, and dipped again for the next colour. Only then does weaving begin, and by that point the design is locked into the thread with no way to correct it. Because the threads shift as the weaver works, the motif blurs at its edges. Weavers call it feathering. The quality of an ikat can be read in that blur, and a sharp-edged ikat is almost always a print.
Our work
Ours is single ikat, and we would not describe it otherwise. It is cut into a collar kurta and a work tote rather than a sari, which is a departure from what the cloth was made for.
Kundanकुंदन
Origin
Kundan predates the claw setting by centuries and was refined under Mughal patronage, where it was worked in gold and used for pieces intended to leave a court and enter a family. It survives in India largely through inheritance. The pieces that come out of a bank locker for a wedding are usually kundan.
Technique
Pure gold is soft enough at room temperature to be worked by hand pressure alone. A craftsman presses band after band of fine foil into the gap around a stone until it is locked. No heat, no solder, no adhesive. The result looks unlike a claw setting because the stone sits in a bed of reflective metal rather than being gripped from above, which is why light behaves differently across a kundan surface.
Our work
We set kundan-style stones into fabric rather than metal. That is a departure and we state it plainly: this is not fine jewellery and is not priced as such. What it buys is weight. A metal body large enough to carry these settings pulls on the ear across an evening, which is why traditional kundan tends to be worn for three hours and then removed.
Ghungrooघुंघरू
Origin
The ghungroo is not ornament. In Kathak it is an instrument, and a dancer wears between fifty and two hundred bells on each ankle, tied in rows onto a cord. The sound is part of the composition rather than a by-product of movement. Learning to hold the bells silent takes longer than learning to sound them.
Technique
Each bell is a small hollow sphere with a pellet inside, and it is tied on individually. Adhesive is faster and fails all at once. A tie works loose gradually and visibly, which is the reason to prefer it. A style carrying a full row takes roughly twice as long to make as a plain drop of the same size, and almost all of that difference is the tying.
Our work
We use a handful of bells rather than dozens, at the edge of a drop or beneath a stud. The line between heritage and costume is mostly a question of quantity.
Hand-Painted Ceramicमिट्टी
Origin
Painted pottery in India runs from the blue tilework that arrived through Persia and settled in Jaipur, to the unglazed red earthenware still thrown in most districts of the country. Jaipur blue pottery is the outlier and the one most often misnamed: it contains no clay at all, being built from quartz, fuller's earth and gum.
Technique
The painter draws freehand onto a curved surface, usually in one pass, because glaze does not forgive correction. They are holding a shape that turns, working from memory of the motif rather than a stencil, and repeating it several dozen times a day. Under those conditions consistency of feeling is achievable and consistency of millimetre is not. Then the piece is fired, and firing moves colour. It pools where it is thicker, thins over an edge, and shifts shade with position in the kiln. Two cups from one run come out siblings rather than twins.
Our work
The range is built for an Indian table rather than a Western one: katoris, quarter plates, chai cups. Nothing is a matching set, because an Indian table is layered rather than uniform.
Cloth as Material
Origin
Indian jewellery has never required precious material. Cowrie, glass, lacquer, thread, mirror, seed and bone appear across regional traditions alongside gold, often on the same body. The idea that jewellery must be valuable to be worth wearing is a narrow and fairly recent import.
Technique
A garment workshop produces cloth it cannot use. Sleeve curves, hem trims, the last third of a metre. In most places it goes into a sack and then to landfill, because it is too small to cut from and it is nobody's job to solve. Working it into jewellery is not a gesture added afterwards. The pieces exist because the offcuts did, and a pair uses a few square inches of cloth that had no other future.
Our work
This is the house's own method rather than an inherited one, and it is the reason no two pairs match: each is cut from a different part of a length.
The fabric earrings and the Neck Edit
Marble and Knotसंगमरमर
Two crafts worked at smaller scale. Marble is cut and finished by hand for the trays and coasters, and the veining means no two pieces read alike. Macramé is knotted one knot at a time, a technique with no Indian origin claim that has been absorbed into Indian making regardless.
Table accents and cushion covers
What We Do Not Claim
Our ikat is not Patola. Our kundan is not fine jewellery. We do not describe a dye as natural unless we can verify it, and we do not attach a craft name to a piece that only resembles the craft. Several of these traditions are under pressure, Ajrakh and Patola most of all, because the labour is long and the market rewards imitation. Overstating what a piece is does more damage to a craft than ignoring it.
Everything is made in India and finished by hand in Ahmedabad. There is more on how the house works in made slowly, made to last, and on what the labour actually costs in why handcrafted work costs what it does.