SHOP DETAIL

INTRODUCTION

The rationale behind RootsTale: The Inspiration and the Birth As a woman journalist for over 20 years, I worked for media houses, public radio broadcaster and as an independent documentary film maker. All these exposed me to the beautiful stories of grassroots artisans from different parts of India. These stories, starting from their learning process of such wonderful art form through their parents and grandparents and then to become full-fledged art producers and their journey to getting exposed to local markets fascinated me tremendously. During my interaction, one common challenge I found among them was to deal with the middlemen and the market forces. I realized that an artist can only be an artist and can produce beautiful products with their skills and design imagination. They cannot deal with the market forces and even if they do so, they lose their focus in their beautiful work. The market forces understand this weakness of artisans and thus they become dependent on exploitative middlemen. Being far from the consumers in the high-end market, who have both appreciation and affordability for handmade products, artisans have no option but to stay dependent on middlemen. Some of these artisans lose their interest in their own art form, which does not pay them so well. Due to combination of such factors, some of the art forms and traditional craft are dying. After having exposed to different art forms and interacting with hundreds of artisans in different regions, I realized that there is a tremendous potential of facilitating these producers in reaching out to the market. The market, which appreciates the art form and the amount of hand work, which has been put into making gorgeous products. There is a huge potential in cross-experimentation among different art forms to make the products vibrant and stunning. RootsTale is a brand initiative to facilitate cross- fertilization of ideas of hand artisans and handloom weavers.