The Milan Design Week — also known as Salone del Mobile — is the world's largest design event, held annually in Milan, Italy, from April 7th to 13th, encompassing the Salone del Mobile fair and the city-wide Fuorisalone festival, highlighting the latest in furniture, lighting, and design from across the world. This year, Indian designer Vikram Goyal is poised to be one of the standout exhibitors at the event with his return to Nilufar Depot with a capsule collection of meticulously crafted, limited-edition pieces, each representing a fascinating bridge between India’s ancient artisanal techniques and vibrant contemporary creativity.
“Most people who work with metal tend to cast it and pour it into moulds,” Goyal says. “We work in sheets, which we hammer and weld. It’s very different — a classical Indian technique that allows us the flexibility to experiment on a very large scale. Our goal has always been to stretch boundaries and to create a broad spectrum of work. Some of our pieces are decorative and representational, others more abstract and visceral.”
The New Delhi-based designer’s collection includes side tables, consoles, a cabinet, and a wall sconce, encapsulating his singular stewardship of materiality, culture, and tradition. A champion of India's rich metalworking heritage, Goyal's designs are rooted in repoussé — an ancient metalworking technique where the metallic surface is hand-hammered to create elaborate textures and patterns. By modernising this technique, Goyal preserves traditional craftsmanship while elevating the ages-old art-form to high-end collectible design. Displayed at Nilufar Depot, a gallery renowned for supporting and showcasing avant-garde design, Goyal’s work is expected to attract art collectors, interior designers, and architecture enthusiasts eager to explore the intersection of Indian tradition and contemporary cutting-edge design techniques and trends.
The Mesa Trio Consoles and the Shaded Graphite Cabinet, the centrepieces of this collection, reimagines the familiar through craftsmanship in brass. Patinated to mimic the depth of shaded graphite, the cabinet retains the dichotomy of angularity along with organic surface textures, to evoke the form of the carbon crystal lattice; while the sculptural brass consoles are topographical in their textures, evoking the contours of the earth from a bird’s eye view. The pieces have been created using a simple form of the repoussé technique — hammering metal into relief from the reverse.
“Repoussé for me is very special,” Goyal says. “There’s a great, dynamic play between how much pressure is applied on one part, because it is at the expense of its neighbouring areas. This is where the skill of an artisan comes into play. No piece comes out exactly the way the designer imagined it, because there’s no way the designer can guess how much pressure will be applied — which makes each piece unique.”
As global demand for bespoke, handcrafted furniture grows, Goyal is leading the movement toward exclusive, one-of-a-kind pieces that blur the boundary between functionality and art. His approach aligns with the rise of slow design — emphasising quality, craftsmanship, and cultural heritage over mass production.
Vikram Goyal’s work will be exhibited at Nilufar Depot, first floor at Nilufar Viale Lancetti 34, as part of the Milan Design Week from 8th April to 13th April 2025. Follow Vikram Goyal Studio here.
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