, Shruti and Rahul K., Bengaluru (Product: Nautical Folk Harmony)
We bought the Nautical Folk Harmony because it looked delightful, the colours, the figurines, the storytelling quality of the piece. We hadn’t thought much about what tradition it came from.
The note card in the packaging mentioned “Rajasthan folk painting tradition, inspired by the Mewar school of miniature painting.” That sent us down a two-hour Wikipedia rabbit hole, the Mewar school, the Rajput paintings, the court of Rajasthan, the specific motifs that appear in the figurines.
We came out of that rabbit hole knowing what our piece actually was. Not just a decorative object, a contemporary expression of a painting tradition that goes back five hundred years to the royal courts of Rajasthan.
We went back to the Premloom website and read every product description much more carefully. We now use the pieces as conversation starters in the way that, I think, the people who made them would have wanted.