“I can’t wait for my holidays to start,” Vikram Goyal laughs as we sit down to chat at 7pm on a Monday. It’s a lie. I know him well enough to know he will work through any day off because he can’t turn off his obsession with design. Last month, the Delhi-based designer showed his collaboration with de Gournay, the British luxury interiors company that specialises in creating hand-painted wallpaper, fabrics, porcelain and hand-carved furniture, at PAD London 2024. Next week, he flies to Miami to debut his eponymous studio’s work with The Future Perfect gallery at Design Miami. Last year, he became the first designer to exhibit at India Art Fair and the first Indian designer to show at Nilufar Gallery in Milan. It’s safe to say he’s getting pretty used to being a pioneer.
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Goyal’s mind keeps turning with ideas that have produced over two decades of his design career. His body of work is proof that good art needs no formal education to back it. Degrees in engineering, Development Economics at Princeton and a career in finance may inform his business sense and technical skill, but his designs have always sprung from the childhood he spent in Delhi and Rajasthan. Goyal’s penchant for Indian craft was born from the rich history of both these states, as was his inclination to work with brass, an ‘impure’ alloy made of copper and zinc, considered to be spiritually pure and sacred. But it is his innovation with repoussé (the technique of hammering metal into relief from the reverse) that has earned him global acclaim, so much so that documentarian Aradhana Seth even made a ten-minute short film titled Drawing In Metal in 2023 to explore his relationship with it.
Repoussé is also the nexus of Goyal’s collaboration with de Gournay, unveiled at the designer’s studio in Delhi-NCR earlier this week. “This collaboration was born out of a long-standing desire to engage more deeply with India’s creative landscape,” says Claud Cecil Gurney, founder of de Gournay. “Vikram’s work deeply resonated with us. We could immediately see how the intricately carved and moulded metal, combined with Persian and Chinese influences, could be reimagined as stunning wallpaper designs.”
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The collection features three designs, considered by Goyal to be an “incredibly faithful” adaptation of his keynote brass repoussé pieces translated into bas-relief scenes on gilded paper. The wallpapers have been created by rendering the design elements in a special solution that produces a relief effect when heated. There is ‘Dreamscape’, Goyal’s personal favourite because “it has so many elements of auspiciousness in India and is talismanic on many levels. I love anything with the narrative of protection, prosperity and opportunity. The fact that somebody in the 17th century created them fascinates me.”
The second is ‘The Garden of Life’, top of Gurney’s list for its “depiction of the fabled Silk Road: the historic trade route across which the first hand-painted wallpapers—like the ones de Gournay continues to make today—travelled to Europe from China.” Both agree that the third piece, the ‘Harmony of the Heavens’, inspired by Jaipur’s Jantar Mantar and its unique structures for astronomical measurement, is just as commendable.
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There are myriad crossovers between the design languages of both studios: a penchant for Chinoiserie (a design style based on Chinese or East Asian influences), a desire to delve deeper into Asian lore and tradition, and championing handmade craft in a world that is too impatient for it. “Much of the design that Vikram uses is based on Indian and Persian bronzes, plaques and decoration, which were imported by the Mughals from Persia and which itself came across the Silk Road from China,” says Gurney. “Many of the objects represented in both our works depict steadfastness, happiness, beauty or longevity—symbols in Chinese as well as Indian art. We represent the same emotions and feelings in different ways–de Gournay in 2D, Vikram in 3D. It translates beautifully.”
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“Seamlessly” is the word Goyal uses. “There was a shared integrity of thought. I gave them the full designs and they reinterpreted them with their own gilding and relief work in a way that stayed true to them.” There was some back and forth but the momentum was strong and the turnaround time was incredible. “From a conversation in February to launching the first wallpaper in London in early September, I know it sounds cliché, but it really was seamless,” the designer smiles.
Ask Goyal what he wants India to be known for on the global design stage, and his answer is concise. “Craftsmanship and narrative. I want to dispel the notion of Indian handicrafts and brass being ‘cheap and cheerful.’” It’s a goal he seems to be heading towards at the speed of light. He might crave his holiday, but his work never stops. And the Indian artscape owes him for it.
Also read:
Vikram Goyal’s new exhibit at Bikaner House is for anyone who loves design and drama
A new generation of designers is redefining what ‘handmade’ will look like in the future
Architect Rooshad Shroff’s gallery is an all-blue oasis of calm
