Aperitifs and Aniika: A Summer Trunk Show

It was when summer evenings had started getting chilly, that I received an invite from Meghana Rao- Aniika's founder and the behind-the-scenes tour de force. 

In the past year, a slew of websites selling Indian handmade products to a global audience have debuted. Among them, Aniika has been a firm favorite- I like Meghana's eye for the products she curates and that the designer products on the site don't leave you with a lousy feeling of being ripped off,  just because they've been priced in dollars. 

 The venue was the beautiful interiors of  Devi, one of Manhattan's premier Indian restaurants. Here are a few Aniika's beautifully crafted products that were showcased in Devi's balcony, among floor-to-ceiling paintings of Rajasthan royalty, Rajasthani marble pillars and jali windows, and intricately carved heavy wooden doors. 

A few more pieces of gorgeous jewelery...

 

My favourite....

Remember the gorgeous interiors that I'd mentioned earlier? My fingers were twitching to capture some of them with Meghana in the foreground. A tired Meghana, who'd waited post 9 pm at night, just so that I'd be able to wrap up work and come to the trunk show, refused to pose and so behind-the-scenes she remains until I cajole her the next time around ;)

If you haven't shopped at Aniika already, go take a look.

The India Song Project: Reinventing the Panchatantra

The Danzinger Gallery in New York, currently has an exhibition of stunning images by photographer Karen Knorr. She traveled to North India to photograph some of our most beautiful forts and palaces and then digitally inserted photographs of animals (also photographed by her earlier). 

The Queen's Room, Udaipur City Palace

Takhat Vilas, Mehrangarh Fort, Jodhpur

This series titled 'India Song', has recently been nominated for the 2012 Deutsche Börse Photography Prize- one of Europe's most prestigious awards for photography. 

Samode Palace

Udaipur City Palace

Karen has made a special effort to capture the mardana and zanana  spaces in the Mughal and Rajput buildings that she photographed. Traditionally, the men spent most of their time in the mardana spaces and in the zanana- the women. You can read more about that here. 

Humayun's Tomb, New Delhi

Aam Khas, Junha Mahal, Dungarpur

This last image might be familiar to most of you. It grazed Elle Decor's (India) cover for their 10th Anniversary issue. On a personal note, I would like to thank Kamini for mailing me the issue- Thank you, K! You're the best :) I spent many-a-night drooling over the issue.

Karen's exhibition ends tomorrow- sorry for the short notice, my fellow New Yorkers. 

Here's making up for it- The Met Museum has a wonderful exhibit on, till Jan 8th 2012, of over 220 paintings from India, dated from 1100 to 1900. You can read more here.

I did visit the museum over 2 weeks ago to view the exhibit (and earlier even attended a Amjad Ali Khan concert for it's opening), but was quite distracted by the beautiful new Islamic Art wing instead. I promise to bring back photos of both soon.

Craftsmen from Morocco at Work

I absolutely love Moroccan architecture, design, lanterns, embroidery and I could go on; as would anybody reading this blog.

Here are a few gorgeous images from a Moroccan home that was a spotlighted on Elle Decor a few issues ago to give you a taste of Morocco invading a home.

Hopefully, you've now fallen in love with Morocco too? Then this video by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York of Morrocan craftsmen at work should be a treat for your visual senses.




The craftsmen are working on a wing of the New galleries for the Art of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia and Later South Asia. You can find more information about the new wing here.

The Met along with the Rubin Museum of Art, happens to be one of my favorite museums in Manhattan. If just the wing is so beautiful, could you imagine how gorgeous treasures must be treasures that the museum is going to house there soon?!

I bid you goodnight or good morning, as the case may be, with a huge smile of anticipation on my face.

Tip: If you are in town and visiting the Met, call me. Else, make sure you go looking for the Spanish section. When you stumble on a sunlit courtyard with intricately carved balconies and a high ceiling covered in tiles you know you are in the right place ;)

On a trip to one of my favourite stores

Warning: This is going to be a picture and word heavy post. Read at your own peril ;)

SHP's previous post on 'Pop Goes The Art' was chosen by BlogAdda as a part of it's Tangy Tuesday series. You can read all about it here. It was a wonderful email to wake up to. Thanks BlogAdda for choosing Sound Horn Please! Honoured!

A friend of a blogger friend recently emailed, asking me to recommend stores in NY to buy Indian decor items. Well, I thought to myself why not take all of you on a tour of one my most favourite Indian stores in New York?

Yes! Yes! You ARE reading it right! The name board is in Hindi! And it made me stop in my tracks and walk in. Beti, it's the only one in Manhattan to have one, the owner proudly proclaimed. And then began my romance....

Let me take you on a tour.....

Bhartiya Vasthra Bhandar is not your usual posh Manhattan boutique with accented voices smoothly telling you the history behind 'the piece'. You walk in and its a warehouse choc-a-bloc with colourful stuff, making you take a few deep breaths to decide where to start from. None of the products make you go- 'Errr.. maybe a trip home to buy this would be cheaper'.

 

Bottom right- That's a desi double horn  and its definitely on my 'To Buy List'. With Sound Horn Please as a blog, how can I not? Those light switches brought on a wave of nostalgia.

The cameras below hit right on my soft spot for antiques <sigh>

 Buddhas, Buddhas and more Buddhas! Drool!

I know you must be wondering what I've brought back from the store over my many trips.... So, here is a peek!

I'm thinking of spray painting the lantern red.. Yes? No? And that's my all black bookcase that got a little bit of my brushwork to add some zing!

Here's my favourite- My antique brass paan daan!On my next trip to India, I hope to add my paan daan's South Indian sister- the equally beautiful rectangular brass vethalai petti.

I've had a few emails asking me to post photos of my home. So, here is a tiny peek. I don't usually burden my lovely porcelain elephants with the heavy brass paan daan, they stand tall for their mahouts- my tealight candles.

All of the above images have been clicked by me. Please do not copy. Email me if you want to post it elsewhere on the internet and they are yours :)

Gordon Gekko's Protege Slept Here

I watched the sequel to the movie Wall Street, Money Never Sleeps over the weekend. The original inspired me years ago to join investment banking, until I realized that I belonged at the far far end of the spectrum from investment banking :)

The apartments shown in the movie are gorgeous and are SO huge that I couldn't believe that they were actually Manhattan apartments! So, I did some intense googling until I unearthed photos of the apartment that Gekko's protege, played by Shia LaBeouf, is shown to live in.

Anybody having lived in or visited Manhattan would know how strapped we are for space. This apartment right in downtown Manhattan is a duplex with 4 bedrooms, 5 baths AND 3500 sq. feet of outdoor space!

 Stairway to heaven? 

(Sorry, couldn't resist it! Its the first thought that popped into my head on seeing the staircase)

Look at the view! Empire state building it is, as shown repeatedly in the movie. I loved the fact that there are no heavy or frilly drapes ruining the view. And the decor is so minimalistic, making the view more riveting. Also like the mix and match of the white/light chairs with the heavy leather armchairs at the end. 

The outdoor space is probably bigger than most Manhattan apartments!

Keeping in mind that a Type A investment banker is supposed to be using the apartment, I loved the clean angular look of the four poster bed, white sheets, no nonsense bookcase doubling as a desk.

 

 Okay, this might be irrelevant to decor but I HAD to put in a pic of the to-die-for-closet-space.

 Image credit for all photos to Julie Glassberg for The New York Times.

Also, a peek into the apartment used in the movie by Gekko's daughter. An apartment built by John Jacob Astor in 1827. More photos of the apartment here.

 Image credit: Jennifer S. Altman for The New York Times

Buddhas and Window Displays

Remember the blog post on my visit to the Asia Society? While there I also spent time drooling at their creative display of Buddhas. I love Buddhas and it was wonderful to see them displayed with such drama and creativity. All the statues had the recurring theme of 'Buddha under a tree'.

This is just a teaser photo... I just HAD to put it up as I love hanging lanterns. But you can spot the Buddha in the bottom corner of the photo.

 The hanging glass beads remind me of cherry blossoms! Note the hanging bronze birds in flight. Aren't they lovely?

A white Buddha under a tree with leaves made of mother of pearl(?)

Another bronze Buddha under peacock feathers and disco lights. Like the drama?

Now if only I could add drama to displaying the Buddha head sitting on my bookcase!

Sorry about the image quality-I was asked to take photos without using flash and as it was late evening the light was inadequate, I did the best I could!

Stay tuned for another 'Creative Profile' tomorrow!

Indian Folk Art Market

Check out this wonderful article in the New York Times. I attended the Indian Folk Art Market at the Asia Society mentioned in the article. Not only, did I get to see Kakuben Lalabhai Parmar, I got to interact with some of the artisans :)

As can be noticed here on the right side of the pic above, each of the stands had an explanation of the traditional indian art/craft that it represented.

Traditional methods like Kalamkari, we all know about, but there are some others that I came across that I'm going to chronicle here over a series of blog posts.

 And here is what I bought as my take home!

 Cowrie shell prwettee bangles!