A Bandra-based design studio’s new project revisits the city’s heritage sites to digitally recreate their visually stunning tile-work
Illustrated postcard. ILLUSTRATIONS COURTESY/KAHANI DESIGNWORKS
In a city that teaches you to get your head down and push forward every day, it’s ironic that we miss the beauty right beneath our feet. The age-old floors of Mumbai’s heritage buildings offer a window to a time when novel, innovative designs had their own admirers, long before gentrified spaces became the norm. Tiling Bombay, a series of postcards by city-based studio Kahani Designworks, gives these tiles that shaped Bombay in the 1860s a new lease of life through a series of postcards.
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“We have been researching the city’s architecture extensively for a project titled Storycity since 2013. That’s when we realised that the institutions that emerged during Bombay’s transition from a town to a metropolitan city in the 1860s host some immaculate tile-work,” reveals Ruchita Madhok, founder, adding that the British architects’ foresight of building public spaces with high quality materials that could stand the test of time makes these tiles worth a timely revisit in today’s age.
A photograph of the University of Mumbai campus is used as reference to create
Having documented and studied tiles from Indo-Gothic heritage structures like the Sir David Sassoon Library, Elphinstone College, and University of Mumbai among 42 other sites over the years, Madhok reveals that one name emerges as a prominent influence — Herbert Minton. “From his manufacturing house in England’s Stoke, Minton produced tiles that were rugged, yet artistic. Making these tiles was a laborious task, but equally rewarding. These unique designs and patterns soon came to be known as Minton tiles,” she explains.
However, the 19th century tile maker’s mastery wasn’t confined to the art of production. “Minton was probably one of the first to create a catalogue of his designs and advertise them across the erstwhile British colonies. This is how the tiles from Stoke made their way through the Cape of Good Hope, to find home in multiple structures across Bombay,” Madhok shares.
The Sir David Sassoon Library postcard from the series
While the team has traversed Commonwealth countries like South Africa, Singapore, Pakistan, Australia and New Zealand in search of tiles similar to those in Mumbai, an overlap is rare. The artist elaborates, “We found only one similar design in an old mansion in Melbourne. This is largely because the tiles were designed in a way that they could be arranged in different mathematical progressions to create novel patterns.”
These complexities found a reflection in the process of bringing the postcards series to life, Madhok admits. “We began by photographing not only the tiles, but the corners, how the borders wrap around pillars, and how the patterns terminate and transition into different parts of the building. Back in the studio, we created rough sketches and identified the recurring patterns in the sketches, which were finally coloured in.”
The Elphinstone College postcard features a vintage bus ticket
We notice an interesting addition that breaks the perfect geometry of the artworks — a pair of feet and props in each postcard. “We imagined a story behind each of the postcards. The feet represent individuals who would typically inhabit that space,” the founder shares excitedly.
Ruchita Madhok
The Sir David Sassoon Library postcard, for instance, imagines a gentleman in loafers lounging in a chair with his favourite book. A pair of vibrant footwear and a bus ticket on the floor, on the other hand, make for a nostalgic throwback in the Elphinstone College postcard.
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