PROfile

How do you combine artistic flair and commercial viability? That’s the task confronting Aditi Saraogi every time she shapes a piece of clay into tableware, vases or figurines. She has created clay murals for the Taj group of Hotels in Mumbai and she has exhibited her wares in Beaucens in France.

Her forté is designing home ware like coasters, vases, bowls, tableware and home accessories.

Saraogi was working with a leading advertising company when she realised that she wasn’t really keen on continuing in the world of commercials and corporate hard selling. So she suddenly decided to chuck it all up and make a drastic course correction. “Advertising just wasn’t my cup of tea,” she says.

She started out small working on a table set up in her verandah. After experimenting for nearly a year on her own with various shapes and forms, she found her way to Andretta Potteries that’s set in the pristine hills of Himachal Pradesh and trained under Mansimran ‘Mini’ Singh, the famous son of studio potter, Sardar Gurcharan Singh.

After a three-month stint, she returned to Calcutta and set up her art studio, Bhukriti, in 2002, from where she still retails. Having set up shop, Saraogi did a number of exhibitions over the next three years with Parampara, Grain of Salt and even took her collections to other cities including Chandigarh. Then she was commissioned by The Taj Group of Hotels to create murals and coffee table accessories.

But Saraogi wanted more. In 2005, keeping her fingers crossed, she applied to the Pondicherry-based Ray Meeker, who is reckoned as one of the world’s best pottery gurus. She became one of his four students for that year.

After an intensive training session, Saraogi returned, a different person. “I realised that I had a lot to work on,” she says. She decided to revamp her entire collection and spent a year experimenting with different forms, textures and glazing techniques.

She designed a plethora of utility items at her studio in Calcutta. She also attended several Raku workshops — learning all about this Japanese technique of firing earthen stoneware so that it gets a rich and vibrant finish. Learning Raku also helped her to come up with more innovative colours, shapes and sizes.

Today Saraogi retails not just from her studio but also from Rajniklal, one of Calcutta’s premium ceramic stores on Park Street. You can pick up her trinkets, coasters, Ganesh figurines and pumice stones — and you can be sure these are not the run-of-the-mill ones.

She also enjoys taking pottery enthusiasts through the paces of creating products at the potter’s wheel. She says: “I don’t teach professionally but just to have fun and to inculcate love for the art in as many people possible.”

TRENDS

Over the last few years, terracotta has emerged as a popular choice for designing interiors. However, the products need to be unconventional.

“One should not follow trends as that makes a person static,” says Saraogi. For her, creativity doesn’t follow trends. What she endeavours to achieve with each piece is to put in ‘just a little bit more’. She hopes her designs are distinctive, as she plays with the different processes of glazing and heating.

Though she says that Indians usually prefer bright colours, she likes experimenting with darker and muted shades such as brown, green and blue. One of her most artistic pieces is a set of table mats which she made by stringing together pieces of glazed pottery. She has a host of eclectic designs in tableware.

Saraogi likes to experiment so she has included glass as a medium in her works. She likes to use tiny glass pieces to adorn clay platters.

PROducts

From exotic test-tube vases to little items such as ashtrays in interesting textures and shapes, this designer’s made it all. Saraogi’s USP is that she makes all the pieces herself. Though this is a laborious process, it lends a personal touch to her range. She has not yet considered outsourcing production. While her tiny trinkets, like Ganesh figurines and pumice stones are priced at Rs 25 and Rs 50, her platters are available for anything between Rs 600 and Rs 900 per piece.

She generally designs tableware and home accessories with upmarket clients in mind, who like buying slightly different products for their homes. Her tableware collection including platters, bowls, coasters and table mats is priced at Rs 6,500 onwards for a set.

While a coaster costs Rs 60, bowls cost anywhere between Rs 450 and Rs 1,500 depending upon their size, design and the process by which they are made. Her terracotta uplighters, in various shapes and forms, cost Rs 5,000 each, while her wide variety of vases range anywhere between Rs 500 and Rs 1,500 apiece.

For the moment Saraogi wants to concentrate on studio art. She’s going to be playing around with simple, basic forms of vases and bowls in dull colours and a smoky glaze.

She’s planning to retail on a larger basis and make her products available in Delhi or Mumbai. According to her, one has to keep practical aspects in mind while designing utility items such as making them easy to handle and clean and of course, not using toxic glaze. But for studio art, she can create any shape or size and use any kind of glaze that is required.

She has a couple of exhibitions coming up in October in Chandigarh and Ludhiana in which she will showcase products that she has been working on for the last one year.

Photographs by Rashbehari Das