A shared passion

In their bid to champion traditional and lesser-known craft forms, Indian arts and artisanal villages, Amrita Guha and Joya Nandurdikar of Untitled Design have recalibrated the essence of 'India Modern' by bringing to the fore the charm of traditional techniques while making them intrinsic to aspirational and luxurious narratives

- AVRIL NOEL D'SOUZA.

An alumni of Vastu Kala Academy in New Delhi and Rachna Sansad in Mumbai, Amrita Guha is one part of the powerhouse that makes up Untitled Design, while Joya Nandurdikar makes up the other. A former lecturer of design department in the Delhi administration, Joya is a qualified interiors designer. Together, the award-winning powerhouses have worked steadfast for the last 22 odd years to redefine the tenets of Indian luxury design. In their crusade to champion arts, crafts and the artisans that render intricate creations that steep from rich cultural references, they have elevated the prose around luxury to be inclusive, by making vernacular design visually, functionally and aesthetically, that much more appealing.

These inspiring purveyors of Indian artisanal design focus on curating vignettes that traverse the obvious to build on the nascent idea of what a craft is and thereby making it scaled up, well-nuanced additions to a space. For the high-end residences, boutique resorts, hospitality spaces and commercial hubs, they create, the duo are constantly on the lookout for inspiration, an idea and the means and ways to transform it into living art.

While we know that everything the duo do harks back to perpetuating traditional techniques in contemporary narratives, we wonder how the duo came together and joined forces with this common goal in sight. Joya goes down memory lane and reveals, "Before venturing out together as Untitled Design, we first gained experience with established names in the field. We were working together in a studio, 'The Inside Story', with Jyoti Punj when we both recognised our design compatibility in designing.