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Handmade With Love…..

March 5, 2012March 15, 2017
by Merl

It has been a few weeks, since I last updated you on what’s keeping us busy at Rustic Motifs….well we are currently at the production stage and hope to be ready with our first collection by early April.

Yes I know you might be wondering, that we have been around and we are yet to show you our products and all that we talk about at Rustic Motifs 🙂

But that is the thing about handmade products, it needs time, it needs passion

and it needs its creators to share a bit of themselves in every piece they create.

You may ask what is so special about handmade products….it serves the same purpose as its machine made counterpart and yet costs more. My answer to that is, it’s all about how you see it and it is all in your perception.

Everyone has their own definition for handmade, some say its unfinished and rustic, some say its unique made with a lot of love and care, some see it as adding that personal touch.

At Rustic Motifs we see handmade products as a way to create rural employment, as a means to empower the women folk in the deepest corners of our country, as a channel to ensure our age old traditions and ancient art forms continue to find patrons and even our future generations get to see and experience it.

We love the fact, that it takes longer to make something by hand than it does by machine, because that ensures that the beauty and essence of each piece is unmatched.

Handmade products remind us of all the laughter and stories shared while they were put together. Every motif, every thread, every stroke, every weave speaks of ancient folklores, beliefs and traditions that inspired its creators.

We love the fact that the materials used are organic and locally sourced be it the grass from the riverbanks or vegetable dyes, because it ensures that we leave fewer carbon footprints on the sands of time.

Madhubani artist, Ashok Kumar Das is a national awardee from Madhubani, a village in central India famous for its paintings. I met Ashok recently at an exhibition and he had this to say, “ I can never commercialize my art, the day I do that, I will lose my inspiration and my skill. More than money we seek people who would appreciate the effort we put in, the amount of work that goes into making each painting is immense since everything used is organically sourced and processed. The days we remember are not the days we sell more, but the days we meet customers who see the sweat behind our creations.”

Unfortunately, artisans like Ashok can count such days on their fingertips, because these are far and few….

It is quite sad to see, that despite being a country where ‘maa ke haath ka khana’ beats any 7* restaurant spread, where we still believe that all things handmade from greeting cards to pickles to Diwali sweets speak of love and warmth and where handicraft is the second largest occupation after agriculture, handmade goods and their creators don’t get the kind of respect and recognition they truly deserve.

Most of us including me, we don’t mind going to a mall and shelling out thousands for branded products without so much as a squeak, but then we go to a local potter or a crafts mela by rural artisans and we can’t stop ourselves from polishing our bargaining skills and wrestling out a deal even if it is just for a few rupees.

Am I complaining, maybe or maybe not; I understand why we behave the way we do. It is all about creating that brand experience, about ensuring that the value asked for is the value a product truly deserves. This is what we intend to do at Rustic Motifs, provide our artisans with a platform where they can find the right value for their creations, create the right brand experience for our customers and eventually reach out to people who will appreciate the effort of these artisans and the uniqueness of their craft.

At Rustic Motifs it is our mission to bring that shift in perception, so that the next time you see a handmade product you realize that no matter how much one may try…the closest they will get is an imitation of the original, the original will still be unique with its own tales to tell…..

Post By Merlin Francis

Rustic Motifs Blog

The Making Of Our Brand’s Identity

February 8, 2012March 15, 2017
by Merl

Two months back when we first started giving shape to our idea of Rustic Motifs, there were a lot of words we could think of, to describe what Rustic Motifs was all about, but most of what we expressed was ambiguous and abstract with no physical co-relation.

It was how we felt, what we saw and what we dreamt of. So when we set out on a hunt for a designer who could give an identity to Rustic Motifs, the brief was simple; Someone who could translate all that Rustic Motifs believed in and stood for into a logo, we wanted someone who could see what we saw when we described Rustic Motifs and our business concept and someone who could feel what we felt every time we talked about our products and our artisans……excitement and goosebumps 🙂

We were lucky to meet Pooja Panjabi of Design District. The first time I spoke to Pooja, it felt as if I had known her forever…she patiently heard me ramble about the company, our vision for it and our expectations from the logo. To us the logo was an entity, something that would be a physical representation of our Brand’s personality and beliefs. It can be quite challenging for any designer to deal with a hyper excited bunch of individuals, who feel a lot of different things about the same thing 🙂 but Pooja could share our vision and took on the task with equal enthusiasm and passion.

Pooja tells us, that when she started working on her brief, she decided to go with an interesting motif which will help people identify with the brand. Not an inane design but something that looked intelligent and alive, beautiful but subtle, had pride but was not proud.

She adds, “Rustic Motifs logo was created keeping in mind the simplicity and the bold character of urban India, carrying the old world charm. This meant having an identity that reflects pride and a sense of attitude, standing tall and moving forward. The gothic style font is used to bring about the solidity of the brand.”

I distinctly remember the moment we first opened the file sent by Pooja with the first set of logo options and the moment we set eyes on our birdie with her head held high……Love happened :). She completely bowled us over with her attitude, we found her a little rustic yet charming, confident and proud of her roots and the values she holds and yet grounded in her beliefs. We just knew it right then, that it had to be her…she was the one who people will think of when they think of Rustic Motifs.

Apart from the aesthetics, I think what helped us connect with the motif and the overall logo design was how well it went with our tagline – “Tell Tale Designs”.

In traditional folklore, there is always a story narrator, who is called a ‘sutradhaar’. To us our birdie is the sutradhaar, she is our brand mascot who will go around telling interesting tales about our artisans, their lives and their beautiful works.

American Writer Daniel J. Boorstin once said “An image is not simply a trademark, a design, a slogan or an easily remembered picture. It is a studiously crafted personality profile of an individual, institution, corporation, product or service.”

So thanks to Pooja, we believe we have found the right image that represents and reflects the personality of the minds that work at Rustic Motifs, our products and all those things we feel within.

For all our sakes I hope, our customers will also love Rustic Motifs and give us shelf space not only in their homes & offices but also in their hearts and minds 🙂

Post By Merlin Francis

Rustic Motifs Blog

Bon Voyage…..Rustic Motifs!

January 27, 2012March 15, 2017
by Merl

Today as I write the first blog post for Rustic Motifs, I feel a little emotional. After all, it is the start of a new journey, a new phase in our lives, one we hope will beat the excitement of anything we have ever worked on in the past.

The last few weeks at Rustic Motifs have been the craziest and yet the most satisfying days of our lives.

We are working with some such real gems to put together a collection of traditional yet trendy, interior and exterior decor products for our customers.What motivates us further is the passion these artisans have for their art. They don’t have a lot to support their art but they make up for the lack of it with their love for it, doing everything possible to preserve the skills passed onto them by their ancestors. They have limited options to preserve it, either pass on to an unwilling gen-next or find genuine patrons who will appreciate it and take it mainstream. The kind of things we learnt about our culture, our traditional art forms, our artisans who so effortlessly create such beautiful masterpieces, their willingness to share their trade secrets and welcome strangers like us with open arms and the soulful interactions we had with them ……. is beyond anything we could have experienced sitting within the four walls of a corporate office or in front of our super efficient machines.

When we think of Rustic Motifs, we think of the smell of wet Earth just after the first monsoon showers….we are striving hard to recreate the same magic through our products. We love all that is Indian and we hope that through this venture we will be able to bring ourselves and our customers a little closer to our roots, learn a little more about all those beautiful objects that enrich our living spaces and in the process help someone in a faraway village or town in the heartland of India, fulfill their dreams.

I think, just these few weeks have changed all of us, humbled us and evoked a sense of belonging to something bigger, a larger family out there. There is also a sense of pride, which comes when you know your own worth, your history and all the great things that are a part of who you really are.

There is a plan and we have our heart in the right place, wish us nothing but ‘Bon Voyage’….for we believe it is the journey that counts more than the destination 🙂

Post By Merlin Francis

Handmade With Love…..

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The Making Of Our Brand’s Identity

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Bon Voyage…..Rustic Motifs!

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