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Soheni Arora | soheni.arora@gmail.com
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Hyde & Seek: Design Intervention in Shanti Leather
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Guide Amresh Panigrahi;Shekhar Chatterjee
Sponsor Sasha Exports/ Sasha Association For Crafts Producers
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Keywords accessories;design process;hand-dyed leather;Shantiniketan
This project mainly involved working with Shanti Leather at Sasha Exports, Kolkata; the products created here would be sold in the Indian metros and for exporting to several countries worldwide.
Sasha is an internationally known Fair Trade organisation, and the scope of learning was vast through all the stages of product development, right from range planning to final production. Shanti leather is embossed, hand-dyed leather used to make a variety of accessories—from ladies' handbags to pen stands. Originally produced in Shantiniketan, it is now produced all over the country.
Three collections of Shanti leather products were created: The Buzz Collection was a new set of small accessories for women’s handbags; Neon Jungle was a collection made from recycled animal-print patterns in current-season colours; the collection called, The Angel Boxes was used for packaging hand-carved animal horn combs which are popular Christmas gifts in Europe and USA. A collection of finished leather products was made for the Nidus outlet at NID; this included The Sweet Treats collection, comprising the high-end Dark Chocolate range for customers in the 40+ age group, and the more affordable Jelly Beans range for NID students.
This project helped understand the importance of the design process; it gave insights into working as a designer in a non-design organisation and a chance to apply one’s knowledge of product design to a fashion-centric area. |
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