Over the holiday break, Conor Burke, PRIOR’s intrepid creative director, touched down in northern and central India to embark on an odyssey through the handicraft secrets of Jaipur, Maheshwar, Delhi and Jodhpur. “There is no place that marries color and craftsmanship quite like those parts of India,” Conor said.
A man on an arts-and-crafts mission, his itinerary spanned hole-in-the-wall antique shops overflowing with miniature masterpieces (painted using brushes made from a single squirrel hair, no less), an Old World textile mill operated by a forward-thinking women’s collective, and a family-run gem institution that is home to lapis-carved frog rings with ruby eyes. And along the way, plenty of elegant dishes with just enough bite to cut through the bustling crowds.
Major sites in Rajasthan are swamped with students on winter break from school, which usually runs between Dec. 25 and the first few days of the new year. To accommodate, Conor recommends starting your trip in more rural towns elsewhere, such as Maheshwar, before heading to busier cities like Jaipur.
Photos from his trip doubled as such an inspiring guide to India’s artisan underground that we here at PRIOR just couldn’t keep the insider intel to ourselves.
Follow his treasure hunt through India below.
Jaipur
Palace Hunting
In Jaipur, I stayed at the Rajmahal Palace RAAS Jaipur, an Art-Deco property filled with the royal family heirlooms like a Ford Thunderbird from the 1950s. But I was immediately taken by the cast-brass keychains dangling from the room keys that took the form of Lord Surya, the Sun God in Hinduism. The hotel didn't have a gift store, alas. So, I set about on a hunt through the shops of Jaipur’s Old City hoping to track down a similar keychain and these embroidered wool blankets, which would help us stay warm while dining on the outside lawn by the fire pits.
Curious Coconuts
A while back, I saw Joanna Williams from Kneeland Co. in Los Angeles recommended Rajasthan Fabrics and Arts, an unassuming textile shop located just outside the gates of Jaipur’s City Palace. Besides great fabrics, the store is filled with vintage photography, paintings, jewelry and curiosities — kind of everything, really. I spotted these sculptural coconut husks, which, it turns out, are called coco de mer. The shop owner told me the coconuts are endemic to the Seychelles islands of Praslin and Curieuse and prized for looking like testicles or vulvas, the symbol of the goddess Shakti in Hinduism.
I ended up leaving with these colorful paintings of meditative energy patterns, which I plan to put in a floating box frame so you can still see the beat up paper and appreciate the work as an object. (For those curious, Rajasthan Fabrics and Arts doesn’t have a website, but contact and location information can be found here.)
