"All things begin in order, so shall they end, and so shall they begin again" - Thomas Bowne
_JPG.jpg)
CHAKRA KATHA
‘चक्र कथा'
REINCARNATION THROUGH SPIN OF A TOY
MA Fashion Artefact · LCF UAL · Craft + Product · 2024
Chakra Katha reimagines the heritage spinning tops of Channapatna as fashion artefacts — vessels of story rather than mere play. Each is turned by hand, lacquered in natural colour, and weighted to spin, so that motion itself becomes the telling of a tale: the endless wheel of Samsara, set whirling in the palm of a hand.
A spinning top has no beginning and no end, motion becomes the story of rebirth.
Concept, woodturning, brass-forging, and lacquer, across traditional and modern methods.
Ivory wood, maple, cherry, and brass, dressed in natural lac and enamel.
Rooted in a pilgrimage to the artisans of Channapatna, India.
Seen from above, the cycle resolves into a mandala and like the craft that made it, its flaws are part of its truth.
Six tops, and the wheel is whole: birth, life, death, and a rebirth told in three. Set side by side and seen from above, they gather into a mandala, intricate, balanced, interconnected , the very shape the project set out to tell, arriving at last in form.
Each piece carries a journey within it. Turned between the artisans of Channapatna and the workshops of London, every top holds a story from a different corner of the world, and it is their combined symmetry that lets them spin. The imperfections I once feared - a faint asymmetry, the mark of the lathe, a hairline where the wood cracked under the turning. I learned to read as wabi-sabi: the proof of the human hand, the signature of the handmade. For rebirth does not erase what came before; it builds upon it, raising a new and singular form from the old. Even the moon has its dark spots, yet it shines.
Every stage of making brings its own transformation, where imperfections shape ideas, challenges refine purpose, and the process itself breathes life into creation.
THE LAST ACT
'समाप्ति से पहले'
ONCE UPON A TIME...
‘एक समय की बात है'
A spinning top has no beginning and no end. In its motion lives the cycle of rebirth itself.
The enchanting world of storytelling has captivated me since childhood. As I snuggled beneath the covers, my grandmother's voice would weave tales of wonder and wisdom and those bedtime stories were never just stories. They were the cornerstones of my ideas of ethics, of duty, of life; the cultural cradle in which I grew.
One image stayed with me longest. In the Bhagavad Gita, the soul is named the driver of the chariot, eternal, never-ending, passing from form to form as a driver moves between cars. That childhood fascination became the seed of this study: Chakra Katha, the Whirling Tales - reincarnation told through the spin of a toy.
For across civilisations, objects gather stories. Each carries the whisper of lives lived; each is a tangible thread tying us to something larger than ourselves, enduring through the ages while witnessing the world turn. Toys and fashion share this quiet power, both are cultural storytellers, vessels for the values and beliefs we pass between generations. This project lifts the toy from the floor of the nursery and sets it among artefacts: a humble plaything made to carry the weight of the eternal.
And so the wheel turns again.