Studio Raw Material Transforms Indian Stone Scrap Into Artful Design
Photo: Kristen de la Vallière
You see marble at luxury distributors where it looks polished and special, but here, in the dust, you realize it’s part of the earth,” reflects Dushyant Bansal, gazing out at a quarry in the rural landscape of Makrana, India. Throughout the northwestern state of Rajasthan, where he and Priyanka Sharma run their design firm Studio Raw Material, locals have long harvested stone—from the white variety that built the Taj Mahal to colorful specimens now commonly used for flooring. Pointing toward a stack of offcuts, Bansal continues: “Seeing it like this cracks open the mystery.”
The material serves as a jumping-off point for their research-driven practice that investigates, documents, and reinvents craft and building methods of the country’s western plains. Upon completing their studies at London’s Royal College of Art in 2016 and 2017, respectively, Bansal and Sharma chose not to lay creative roots in the foreign metropolis. Instead, they returned to India, yearning to immerse themselves in the rich landscape of their homeland.
“Starting with marble was organic,” explains Bansal, who grew up in Makrana. “It was what we had access to because my family worked with it.” Inspired to make use of scraps otherwise seen as waste, Bansal and Sharma began collaborating with artisans in the area to create sculptural tables, lamps, and chairs, balancing their artistic vision with artisanal processes derived from generational knowledge. Their Offcut series assembles pieces using the age-old joinery techniques found in temple architecture, often utilizing the weight of the stone to stabilize the objects. Meanwhile, their Khokhar array of furniture collages flooring fragments with an adhesive made from masonry dust. Such pieces caught the eye of New York design gallery Friedman Benda, who included their work in a group show earlier this year and now represents the duo.
These days, they split their time between a Jaipur studio and Makrana, where they’ve constructed a home and fabrication shop out of more stone remnants. In this multipurpose structure, scraps are stacked with mortar composed of cactus sap, husk, and lime, regulating the temperature of
the interior, a testament to the enduring relevance of such vernacular building methods. Inside, their furnishings are joined by recent experiments, among them lights in bamboo and hemp that explore Jaipur’s rich history of papermaking while nodding to the forms of tazias, the tomb replicas used as ritual mourning objects.
“We’ve always been interested in examining the idea of value,” says Sharma, explaining that many of their preferred materials and processes are considered rather ordinary by local stone traders and craftspeople. For her and Bansal, true value comes from time, consideration, and care. She continues, “All of our pieces are made slowly, using many traditional techniques to create works that embody a local identity.” studiorawmaterial.com —Kristen de La Vallière
Originally Appeared on Architectural Digest
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