In a design landscape increasingly driven by speed, trends, and mass production, Kathakaar chooses to move differently, slower, quieter, and with intention.  Kathakaar Studio
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Inside Kathakaar: A Homegrown Design Studio Where Objects Carry Memory

Born from as a love-child of friendship and craft, Kathakaar designs objects meant to be lived with and passed on.

Avani Adiga

In a design landscape increasingly driven by speed, trends, and mass production, Kathakaar chooses to move differently, slower, quieter, and with intention. At its heart, Kathakaar is a furniture and home décor brand built on a simple belief: that objects carry stories, and that these stories deserve to be told and passed on.

Kathakaar began not as a brand, but as a shared journey. Founded by three friends who started an interior design studio together during their college years, the label grew organically out of years spent observing how people inhabit spaces. Over five years of working closely with homes, materials, and everyday objects, they noticed something missing in contemporary Indian furniture, a sense of narrative. Pieces were functional, efficient, even beautiful, but rarely meaningful. Furniture had begun to feel disposable, stripped of the emotional weight it once carried.

That absence became the starting point for Kathakaar.

Rather than seeing furniture as an extension of interior design, the founders approached it as a natural progression of their practice, one that allowed them to slow down and ask deeper questions about craft. Their answer lay in Indian storytelling traditions, where every object is layered with history. Kathakaar draws from this lineage, not to recreate the past, but to carry its spirit forward.

Their first collection, Dareecha, is built around a singular narrative. These stories are explored through a limited and carefully considered range of pieces, where different facets of craftsmanship work together as different interpretations of the same idea. Within a collection, nothing stands alone. Every object is connected, echoing a shared language to remember and revive what has been lost. 

L- Dareecha; R- Their Chitra Katha calendar

Central to this process is the brand’s close collaboration with experienced craftsmen. Their knowledge is shaped over generations and is not treated as a resource, but as a partnership. Their hands, patience, and lived relationship with craft are embedded into every piece, ensuring that what Kathakaar creates carries warmth, honesty, and human presence.

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