City-based designer and entrepreneur Medha Bhatt Ganguly designs with material that most of us discard. Furnishings, bags, accessories, stationery, jewellery... fabric waste turns into beautiful flora and fauna in the hands of this eco-friendly designer, an alumnus of the National Institute of Design. She markets the products under her brand, ‘the forest floor’.
Now Medha has come up with a new collection of cloth jewellery, which she calls ‘florids’ and ‘creepers’. That is how she refers to earrings and necklaces made of bits of cloth, respectively, “because they are nature-inspired forms and colours.”
Cloth jewellery was the first product she brought out under her brand two years ago. “Most of them used to be earrings. The new collection has ear hangings and necklaces,” she says. For the ear hangings she has used wooden and glass beads and buttons, whereas the necklaces are completely of cloth. “The cloth is embedded in the design in the case of necklaces,” she says.
The innovative designer that she is, Medha mounts the ‘florids’ on jackfruit leaves and the ‘creepers’ on bamboo sheaths when she presents them for her customers! “Instead of putting them in plastic covers or mounting them on plastic pieces, I keep them on ripened jackfruit leaves, which are orange in colour. In fact when I kept them for sale at an exhibition in Delhi, it was the leaves that attracted more attention! Thus the designs and presentation are nature-inspired. I opted for these leaves and sheath because I have a jackfruit tree and bamboo at my home!,” she says with a smile.
The products are already going places. She is supplying the jewellery to NIDUS, a design outlet of all those associated with NID, in Ahmedabad. “I have also got a client from New Zealand. People Tree in Delhi is already selling the earrings,” Medha says.
The designs have more takers outside Kerala, she says. “Perhaps, people in the city have a lot of inhibitions when it comes to experimenting,” she says. While the earrings are priced at Rs. 90 and up, necklaces come in the price range of Rs. 250 to Rs. 550. The products are available at her studio at Kesavadasapuram or log on to >http://theforestfloor-recycle.blogspot.com .
