Techniques older than the gallery, in the hands that kept them alive.
Kelly Wearstler has built a career starting from an idea and asking craft to catch up — for this partnership, Æquō asked her to reverse the process, letting material and technique set the terms first. The result, Lahar and Tarang, are two collections unveiled at Mumbai Gallery Weekend inside an exhibition called By Fire: glass enameling, bronze casting, and burnt teak, each worked entirely by hand using techniques passed down for generations rather than invented for the occasion.
Æquō was founded by Tarini Jindal Handa and creative director Florence Louisy on the belief that Indian craft traditions deserve an international platform, and that the right collaborator can push a technique forward without asking it to abandon what makes it specific — Wearstler, as Handa put it, "entered our network with remarkable clarity," drawing three distinct crafts from workshops the gallery had grown alongside since its earliest days into one cohesive process. The scale gap between her practice and each workshop was obvious; how easily the two came together wasn't.
The æquō team introduced me to traditional craft techniques — processes for which the region has been known for centuries, with knowledge passed down through generations. Understanding that lineage, that depth of expertise carried forward over time, transforms the way you approach the work.
Lahar
Lahar reinterprets Wearstler's signature 3D vector motif as a pattern cast directly into bronze, paired with glass enameling that builds a level of dimensional color no other medium quite manages. Bar cabinets, consoles, coffee tables, and light fixtures come finished in bone, ocean, ebony, and steel, each patina pulling a different mood out of the same bronze.
Tarang
Tarang starts with fire: teak carved by hand into a bench, chair, and stool, then burned until the charring itself becomes the finish rather than a flaw to sand away. Bronze detailing grounds each piece's rawness in real weight, tracing the wood's passage from raw material to something newly permanent.
Onyx possesses a translucence that beautifully interacts with natural light, highlighting its intricate banding and veining. It proved to be a mesmerizing material to experiment with.
