'Varun' Bin Planter in Printed Wood

Provenance

The Varun bin planter belongs to the North Indian tradition of decorative woodware — wooden forms treated with surface print and sealed under a waterproof finish to produce objects that are functional and decorative in equal measure. The technique is screen or digitally-applied printing on a prepared wood surface, sealed under resin or lacquer. The tradition comes from workshops in Delhi NCR and western Uttar Pradesh, where artisans adapt the vocabulary of India's painted and lacquered woodwork traditions to contemporary domestic forms including storage, display, and planting vessels.

The palette on Varun — brick red and slate blue — draws from the colour vocabulary of North Indian decorative art: the deep terra of fired earth and the slate-blue of the monsoon sky, the two tones that together characterise the painted surfaces of Rajasthani and UP workshops at their most elemental. Varun in Sanskrit names the Vedic deity of waters and the sky — the cosmic force that holds the blue of the heavens and the deep of the sea simultaneously, the quality of colour that belongs to depth rather than brightness.

The waterproof surface makes this decorative wooden planter suited to everyday use — as a planter with a liner (sold separately), a wastebin, or a storage vessel for the desk or living room. Each piece is individually handcrafted; print placement and colour tone may vary slightly between pieces as a natural feature of the process.

Disclaimer

• These pieces are handcrafted in wood with a printed surface. Variations in tone and colour are a natural feature of the process.
• Minor differences in print registration or surface texture should be understood as the signature of individual craft, not a defect.