“A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction,” says Virginia Woolf in A Room of One’s Own. The first room I ever had came with pink walls (a colour I chose) and a coffee-coloured desk (also my pick). I was eight years old and entirely certain of how I wanted my space to look. With my pocket money of 100 rupees a month, I managed to buy stickers and sketch pens to write fiction — well, they were more scribbled, interpretative collages, but one must start somewhere. And that room gave me the space to do just that, its walls adorned with paintings my mother made in her youth. It was a room intentionally designed to be mine.

With this same idea of building rooms with intention, the Room Therapy Collective curates furniture created by homegrown artists and boutique designer studios. Established in 2017 by award-winning architect Sona Reddy, the collective selects each piece with purpose, aiming to transform a room of four walls into a home that can be cherished and enjoyed. The pieces are available only for a limited time and in limited quantities, preventing bulk buying or mass production. This approach ensures quality control and allows multiple designers to be featured in rotation.

Each year brings a new curation of works from across the country. The 2024 lineup included makers like Gunava, a design studio specialising in wooden furniture; SHED, a material-forward design collective; and Studio Klay, which transforms pottery into collectible pieces. Each maker is chosen because their creations are not merely decorative objects placed in a room, but expressions of culture and heritage deeply rooted in the Indian story.

In many ways, Room Therapy Collective taps into that childhood instinct for a sense of ownership and the freedom to shape your space and environment exactly as you imagine it. In honouring craftsmanship and culture, they invite us to do the same, and to build spaces that hold who we are.

The pieces curated by the Room Therapy Collective are available online here, or at their store located in Hyderabad. 

You can follow them on Instagram here.

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