This custom-made Mumbai home showcases a diverse variety of crafts

“We used to have terrazzo in all our ancestral homes; it’s great to walk and sit on,” says Anuradha. The final shade, white terrazzo with grey chips was chosen because “it reflects light, is easy to maintain, gives a sense of space and my husband wanted white”. So, within the framework of white handmade flooring and bright natural light, Karthik stuck on a canvas in monochromatic grey and white and set to applying spare splashes of colour, and art- and craft-focused broad strokes.

The entire space is one that’s almost entirely been shaped into existence by craft, from the art on the walls to the soft furnishings and rugs to the lights to the mid-century modern furniture made out of recycled teakwood. “I connected with artists who currently don’t have a lot of work. So the idea was also to give them a means of earning money,” he explains. This decision found favour with the Meyappans too. “There is so much effort and skill that goes into making furniture out of this wood, so I was really surprised to find out that handmade teakwood furniture costs the same as new plywood-made pieces,” says Anuradha.

While there was some resistance to the idea of paper lights from the Meyappans—“I mostly consider the cleaning angle and how much work that would be”—Anuradha came around when she realised the banana and jute fibres used to make them were hardy and durable and only needed occasional brushing. And everyone was on board about the artworks. Particulary memorable are the quartet of Mumbai’s public transport vehicles hanging in the living room and the dramatic acrylic-on-canvas abstract on the dining-room wall by an artist Karthik found during the Chitrakala Parishad online. Other framed works have a touch of the personal—from the homeowners’ daughters’ pictures along the corridor leading to the guestroom to the teakwood-framed botanical prints in the master bedroom, which he found in Oshiwara market. It was a fitting addition, given that Anuradha was a botany student.

Industrial Meets India Modern

Karthik’s vision to create a “contemporary Chettinad home” was offset by his desire to “experiment with industrial lighting”. The outcome of that experiment has clearly been a success. It required him to do a bit of convincing—Anuradha’s husband just couldn’t visualise what it would look like; and, of course, painstaking planning—their younger daughter is a mechanical engineer and laid out the grid work. Now, the black PVC pipes running across the ceiling punctuated with gold-accented bulk headlights are as eye-catching as any craft that’s on display. And statement walls in red exposed brick offset the industrial aesthetic nicely.

The seemingly untenable combination of India modern meets industrial works well, infusing warmth in a calibrated edgy look overlaid with vintage craft. “I believe a house should reflect its inhabitants. It shouldn’t look ‘designed’ and it should be welcoming,” says Karthik. His aim has been definitively borne out. “We used to get home really late from work previously; now, we’re home by 5.30. We look forward to being in this space,” says Anuradha. It helps, of course, that it looks as pretty in the moonlight as it does in daylight.

And if there is anything the pandemic has made clear, it’s the value of coming home to warmth, comfort and beauty.