SĀR: The Essence of Indian Design, written and curated by Rashmi Varma and Swapnaa Tamhane with photographs by Prarthna Singh
Published by Phaidon Press, 2016
This book aims to find a language for design within India – taking into account histories of craft, colonial influences, trade between neighbouring countries, pre and post-Partition, and what contemporary design is. There is no one word for 'design' in either Sanskrit or Hindi, and so we chose the word "sār" which means essence. We were looking for what an essence of an object could be that could reflect a sensibility.
