So the story goes

It’s always tempting to write about product and furniture designers Doshi Levien in binary terms. Nipa Doshi is a talker, who was born and raised in India, which naturally gives her an innate understanding of color and pattern. Jonathan Levien is the reserved Scotsman, with a cabinet-making background, who provides the three-dimensional form and the making chops.

As is often the case, there are elects of truth in this simplistic telling of their work and relationship, but it lacks any semblance of nuance. It’s also something they have been railing against since their first press interview with Blueprint back in 2003 (full disclosure I was editing the magazine at the time), when Nipa said: ‘What I want to challenge is the cliched stereotyping of India, which is limited to a stylistic parody of Bollywood kitsch and curry houses.’

plurality

Eighteen years on, it’s something she’s keen to reinforce as soon as the record symbol on Zoom glows red. ‘For me, Grant, one of the things that is very important in our discussion is that there has to be a level of sophistication to this idea of what plurality means. In multicultural societies, the discussion has gone beyond the duality of influences… It’s really important to me that when you write about it – and when we talk about it – we assume we’re not talking about basics. We’re in the 21st century and the discussion has to go beyond east meets west.’ As she points out, she is surrounded by an extraordinary panoply of influences. The first family home in Delhi was art deco, as was her grandmother’s house in Bombay, while her aunt’s house in Ahmedabad was Modernist, designed by an assistant of Le Corbusier.

‘In some ways I grew up in design,’ she remembers. ‘I took in modernity, tradition, ancient culture and architecture. This was normal for me.’ Important too was that she was surrounded by different religions and contrasting customs. ‘That was a strong influence even when I was growing up,’ she says. ‘I remember loving the plurality of my environment.’

modernism

European modernism was a huge element of her education at the National Institute of Design in Delhi, a school that was founded, after all, by Charles and Ray Eames. This was where Nipa developed a fascination with Jasper Morrison’s work. ‘The way we learned design in India was still a very European model,’ she explains. ‘It made me realise the education I’d received was also second hand.

’The pair met at London’s Royal College of Art and developed a bond. However, they only started collaborating professionally (and subsequently marrying) a few years later. Jonathan had been working for Ross Lovegrove but was keen to strike out on his own. ‘I looked at my skillset – what I had to offer – and realised I needed an injection of something else,’ he tells me. I wanted to disrupt what I felt was my slightly limited European designer training. I saw in Nipa an opportunity to do that. She had a very different approach to design that wasn’t reductive and “less is more”. It was more about celebrating colour, detail and form.’

prejudice

Their first project was cutlery and tableware for Habitat in 2000, at the invitation of the then creative directive director, Tom Dixon. So far, so good. However, they really made a splash in the wider design world a few years later with a range of kitchenware for Tefal, which combined quietly elegant, authentic forms with a surprise – some beautifully patterned, and very colourful, bases. Two decades on, it’s hard to emphasise quite how unusual they were. ‘There was a lot of prejudice in design,’ says Nipa. ‘When I say prejudice, I don’t mean racial prejudice or gender prejudice – although they also exist but let’s put that to one side. I think there was a lot of prejudice about what is “good design”. I was always amazed at how creative, open people would talk about design in such narrow terms. It was definitely very masculine and minimal. “Good design” was like a stick you could beat people with.’

Towards the back end of the decade though things began to change, as Jonathan confirms. ‘By 2007 we felt we were beginning to get some traction and people were excited about what we were doing,’ he says. ‘The world started opening up as other economies became more powerful. Suddenly the European-model-fits-all didn’t work. And it’s working less and less in a way,’ Nipa chimes. Interestingly though, their big break came with Moroso, an Italian furniture manufacturer. The Charpoy Collection was a range of daybeds that brought together Indian seamsters with Italian industrial craft. ‘It wasn’t until we started working with [the company’s creative director] Patrizia Moroso that I think we really found our home in terms of the environment. We had absolutely no restrictions, in terms of creativity and self-expression in our work,’ says Jonathan.

stereotype

If the ‘east meets west’ narrative has become hackneyed over the years then the thread that has always run through their work is a love of craft. It’s a hugely important part of Jonathan’s background – and model making with card is how he works up his ideas and forms now – and it surrounded Nipa in her youth. ‘I grew up with craft almost as an industry,’ she laughs. It’s also the bedrock of many of the European manufacturers the pair work with from furniture manufacturer such as B&B Italia and Kettal, via textile brand Kvadrat and shoe maker John Lobb.

So back to that quote from 18 years ago. Have the pair changed the stereotypical view of India through their work? ‘Have I done that? I hope 100 times over. I think that is because I’ve worked with Jonathan our pieces haves transcended that kind of cliche,’ concludes Nipa. ‘However, I would say when you think of design from India and the way it’s talked about, it’s still quite patronising. I hope there are more designers from different parts of the world who are able to challenge what design is. And I think through our work I’ve definitely been trying to do that.’

plurality

modernism

prejudice

stereotype

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