"All things begin in order, so shall they end, and so shall they begin again" - Thomas Bowne
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CHAKRA KATHA
‘चक्र कथा'
THE WHIRLING TALES: REINCARNATION THROUGH SPIN OF A TOY
MA FASHION ARTEFACT · LCF UAL · CRAFT + PRODUCT · 2024
SOLO PROJECT · 8 MONTHS · HANDCRAFTED BY ME
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.
CHAKRA KATHA
‘चक्र कथा'
Reincarnation through Spin of a Toy
MA Fashion Artefact · LCF UAL · Craft + Product · 2024
Solo project · 8 months
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.
Ivory wood, maple, cherry, and brass, dressed in natural lac and enamel.
Concept, woodturning, brass-forging, and lacquer, across traditional and modern methods.
Rooted in a pilgrimage to the artisans of Channapatna, India.
A spinning top has no beginning and no end, motion becomes the story of rebirth.
TALES OF TECHNIQUES
'तकनीकों की कथा'
You can't skip the process; you must complete the cycle to reach the endgame.
Where It Got Hard:
You can't skip the process; you must complete the cycle to reach the endgame. Every turning had to be earned.
Between the first sketch and the final spin lay a year of trial, failure, and return. Wood that was too heavy, rings that broke, machines that promised precision but couldn't keep it, lac that refused the London cold, every artefact in this collection had to be earned twice: once in the designing, and again in the making.
These eight tales trace that journey through wood, brass, colour, and flame, where each mistake became a teacher, and the process itself became part of the story of rebirth.
The Whorl of Wood
finding the weight
A top lives or dies by its balance. Cherry, dense, heavy, choked the spin at the scale I needed; a CNC glitch broke the symmetry and the test failed. Cedar, chosen for its texture and its own symbolism of rebirth, proved too thin-walled, no heart at its centre to flip on. Ivory wood was light and willing, but the scale-shift from miniature to hand-sized meant body and spindle had to be born separately, the piece made in two parts. After sitting with the artisans, I returned to the lathe and there, at last, found the balance between form and function.
Turning the Spindle
the largest piece, the hardest spin
Creating the perfect palm-spun spindle for Jiva was the most challenging and most rewarding piece of the collection. Its design demanded a precision only the lathe could give: cutting, mounting, chiselling to shape, checking against the stencil, sanding, lacquering. The first ivory prototype lacked the density for a sustained spin; the balance I envisioned kept slipping away, sending me deeper into the wood itself to find it.
Whirl of Mechanics - The Frozen Link
the cold connection
Jiva's wheels needed a mechanism. Solid brass ran too heavy; a ring lightened it; stops held the wheels in place; a tube set into the hole cut the friction between brass rod and wood until the movement ran smooth. My first rings, at 0.5 mm, were too flimsy and delicate — at 0.8 mm they found their strength and their shine. Built by the sandwich method, joined cold, piece by piece until, in the words of my own process notes: works well - yuhuuu!
The Spin of Brass
Spirals of Renewal
For Rebirth, a brass hemisphere - the soul itself shaped by metal spinning, a blank formed over a rotating mandrel: the very process an echo of the project's theme. A solid hemisphere would have drowned the spin in weight; hollow, at 1.2 mm, it held both strength and lightness. Around it, the rebirth stage rose in cherry wood and colour, mint green, warm yellow-green, stripes of enamel over lac, heritage and innovation flourishing as one. And on the lathe I turned the golden crowns for every top, chasing brass to match the precision of the wood, the machine's measurements drifting, each adjustment a step toward harmony between form and function.
Cuts and Constructs
the Illusion of the machine
A top lives or dies by its balance. Cherry, dense and heavy, choked the spin; thin-walled cedar had no heart to flip on, and failed in testing; ivory was light and willing but couldn't hold a long spin alone. Each failure was a teacher, schooling me in mass, scale, and the secret centre of gravity and each sent me back to the lathe to begin again.
The Trapped Soul
mastering the loop
Marana needed a brass ring of 6.5 cm, a size the world refused to sell me. I tried annealing and stretching a smaller ring; it failed. So I forged my own: a solid brass rod, annealed and stretched over a ring base by hand. The first, at 5 mm, spun too heavily; I remade it at 3.5 mm for speed and grace. The labour taught me how brass yields under heat and resists under stress and left me surer of my own hands.
Tales in Tints and Tones
the alchemy of lac
Colour was its own battle: how to make it carry meaning, not just beauty. The palette became the story, reds and yellows for the spark of Birth; the full spectrum of joy and shadow for Life; wood stain, black, and earthy brown for the stillness of Death; greens and vivid enamel for the surge of Rebirth. The lac itself was made the old way, with the artisans: raw lac heated soft, infused with eco-friendly dyes, turmeric for yellow, vermilion for red, indigo for green. But London's winter fought the craft: the lathe wouldn't reach the heat the lac needed to melt and marry the wood. It took to hale and maple; cherry's dense, oily grain turned it away. Success one day, refusal the next.
Sheen, Shine & Wabi-Sabi Tales
the finish, and the flaw
Each stage earned its own finish: polished lac and brass for the purity of the early stages; matte and aged solemnity for Death; high-gloss brilliance for Rebirth - the surfaces themselves evolving through the cycle. I tested them all: satin and matt-satin brass, Polyx oil, beeswax, linseed, microcrystal wax. And through it, pieces cracked, thin walls, high speeds, a mismeasured mount. Artisans give their whole lives to this craft; I learned why. But the slight asymmetries, the marks of the hand, I came to read them as wabi-sabi: the signature of the handmade, proof that rebirth doesn't erase what came before, it builds upon it. Even the moon has its dark spots, yet it shines beautifully. The same goes for us, our flaws don't dim our light; they make us real.
Vikas (Rebirth, the Blossoming)
Jati (Birth)
Anagat (Rebirth, the Forthcoming)
Jiva (Life)
Marana (Death)
Utpatti (Rebirth, the Genesis)
Every form was measured before it was made and remade until it Spun
'प्रत्येक आकृति को बनाने से पहले मापा जाता था और फिर उसे तब तक दोबारा बनाया जाता था जब तक कि वह घूमने न लगे।'
Even the moon has its dark spots, yet it shines beautifully. The same goes for us - our flaws don't dim our light; they make us real.
To the artisans of Channapatna and my technicians at LCF this work spins because of you.
THE LAST ACT
'समाप्ति से पहले'
A spinning top has no beginning and no end. In its motion lives the cycle of rebirth itself.
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.
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.
Storytelling has held me since childhood. Beneath the covers, my grandmother's voice wove tales that were never only tales, they were the cornerstones of what I understood about duty, ethics, and life.
One image stayed longest. In the Bhagavad Gita, the soul is named the driver of the chariot: eternal, passing from form to form as a driver moves between cars. That childhood fascination became the seed of this project.
Across civilisations, objects gather stories, each carrying the whisper of lives lived, tying us to something larger than ourselves. Toys and fashion share this quiet power: both are cultural storytellers. This project lifts the toy from the nursery floor and sets it among artefacts, a humble plaything made to carry the weight of the eternal.
The asking. Can rotational play, the oldest, simplest motion in a child's hand become a vessel for one of the oldest stories we tell: the endless turning of birth, life, death, and rebirth?
And can a heritage craft, made to be played with, hold that weight without breaking?
Narrative Review
'कथात्मक समीक्षा'
Before a single form was turned, I traced the cycle across cultures and craft.
The longing to understand what follows death has shaped peoples for millennia. In Hinduism and Buddhism it takes the name Samsara, the endless turning of birth, life, death, and rebirth. I followed the symbols cultures built to hold it: the Bhavachakra, the Buddhist wheel of life; the triskele, among the oldest emblems of cyclical existence; the whirling dervishes of the Sufi tradition, spinning around a fixed point toward the divine, a spinning top in human form.
And then, the craft itself. Channapatna, a heritage art of Karnataka, turns soft ivory wood on a lathe and dresses it in lacquer made from natural dyes. The craft is its own kind of reincarnation: sustainable, cyclical, passed hand to hand across generations.
So I went to it. I sat with the artisans, learning the physics of the spin, the temperament of lacquer, and the patience a lifetime of this craft demands.
And so the wheel turns again.