From Twig-shaped ‘bowls’ to leaf-shaped handles for your doors and cupboards crafted from brass or bronze, New-Delhi-based Design Alchemy offers beautiful and uniquely crafted metal design objects for your home. Established in 2010, the metal design studio has been making contemporary designs crafted in metal, but employing traditional Indian metalworking techniques wherever possible. While the studio’s pieces are unique and contemporaneous, they also extensively draw from the world around us when it comes to design. While we’ve all dreamed of capturing the amorphous beauty of a dry leaf, the folks from Design Alchemy actually do it by creating almost real-life-like casts of nature-inspired motifs in their design.
Nature and its organic elements including people lend themselves to the decor pieces from Design Alchemy. While their offerings are niche and select, they have become beloved over the years for their intention and their novelty in design. Led by word of mouth, Design Alchemy mentions that they purely depend on ‘referral marketing and successfully sharing a long-standing relationship with the best in the hospitality as well as design and architecture space’. While Design Alchemy creates more consumer-friendly and focused products, the same team is also behind the venture The Ferrous Factory which takes a more B2B approach. They create custom metal design work for everything from panels for high-rise buildings to creating specialised artworks for architects, interior designers and builders. While bespoke gates, sculptural features, or installations may be a tad bit out of the range for the average young Indian, the pieces under their retail label offer smaller, perhaps more attainable and adaptable pieces of decor that capture the studio’s overarching artistry.
Following traditional Indian sand casting or lost wax casting techniques, they craft their design objects. These techniques employ the use of a negative form, into which molten Brass or Bronze is poured. Crafted with great care and attention to detail, the moulds for each design from Design Alchemy are crafted by creating an initial sculpture in wax or clay. After the mould has been finalised, the metal is melted at approximately 1000°C and poured into the mould. After this initial design has been created, the outer core of each piece is chiselled away, welded where required, and receives final touches including patination to create a timeless finish. This is why the studio guarantees that no two pieces of theirs are ever alike. There are variations in texture and colour that are inherent to being a handcrafted product, that lends to the beauty of each piece.
From the Brass Apple Shaped Bowl priced at Rs.1950 and the Bird T-Light holder whose prices start at Rs.1200, which are easier on the pocket, The Design Alchemy offers the mastery of their craft through these tiny, crafted objects. But for those who are looking for design objects for their space that can start a conversation, they have more expensive, but justifiably so, pieces that include tables like the Champa or the Tulip that are made in Cast Brass and feature interesting details and textures. Personally, this writer is quite taken with their Brass Magnolia Candle holder with a twig-like design that is confoundingly life-like and would look perfectly at home, on an empty nook in my room.
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