Indian art in a workspace

What a reception wall has to do

It has to read from the door, which is usually six or seven metres away, and it has to survive being looked at from half a metre by somebody waiting.

Those two requirements pull against each other. Work that reads from across a lobby tends to be bold and simple. Work that rewards close looking tends to be detailed.

Relief with mirrors is one of the few things that does both, because the shadow carries at distance and the mirror setting carries up close. That is why the craft survived on walls people walked past every day.

Scale, in a room with height

Office ceilings are taller than domestic ones and most people under-buy as a result. A piece sized for a living room looks lost on a lobby wall.

The two-thirds rule still applies but you measure against the reception desk, not the wall. Above a 240cm desk you are looking at around 160cm of artwork.

If the budget will not stretch to one piece that size, a group of matched smaller pieces covering the same width works better than a single undersized panel. Jharokha frames are made for this and a run of six reads as one composition.

The video call wall

This one is new and nobody plans for it. The wall behind whoever runs the meetings is now seen by more people than the reception wall is.

A camera flattens things. Fine detail disappears, and anything with strong repeating pattern can strobe on a compressed video feed. Relief work holds up because the camera reads the shadow.

Keep it off-centre behind the chair rather than directly behind the head. Directly behind reads as a halo and everyone notices it.

Mirror work needs care here. If a lamp or a window is throwing light straight at the piece, the mirrors will flare on camera. Angle the light or move the chair.

Meeting rooms

Pattern beats subject in a room where people are supposed to be concentrating on each other. A geometric or mandala form gives the eye somewhere to rest without telling a story that competes with the meeting.

Avoid anything figurative or devotional in a general meeting room. It is read as a statement about the company whether you meant it that way or not.

One piece per room is plenty. Meeting rooms are smaller than people remember.

Corridors and breakout space

Corridors are seen in motion and at an angle, almost never head-on. Horizontal compositions suit them and detailed work is wasted.

Breakout areas are the opposite, and they are where I would put the piece with the most to look at, because people sit there for twenty minutes at a time with a coffee.

A series along a corridor works if the pieces share a palette and the spacing is consistent. Vary either and it reads as whatever was left over.

Working to a brand palette

I can work to your colours, and I would rather you sent me the hex codes or a printed sample than a description.

What I would caution against is matching exactly. A piece in the precise brand blue reads as merchandise. A piece that sits near it, with the brand colour as an accent rather than the ground, reads as art that belongs in the building.

Bring me the palette and tell me which colour is the one that matters. I will use it where it counts and build around it.

Durability in a commercial space

Offices get cleaned by people who are paid by the hour and are not thinking about your wall art. Assume it will be wiped at some point.

Framed pieces survive that better than unframed, because the frame takes the cloth.

Keep clay away from pantry walls and anywhere near a kettle or coffee machine. Steam is the one thing that will genuinely damage it, and office pantries produce a lot of it.

Mount at a height where a passing shoulder or a trolley cannot reach it. In a corridor that means higher than you would hang at home.

Ordering several pieces that belong together

A matched set is designed together rather than assembled from separate commissions. Tell me at the start how many and for which walls.

Expect near-identical rather than identical. Every piece is hand laid and the variation is the point. If true uniformity matters to your brand team, say so before design and I will tell you honestly whether I can meet it.

Simpler designs scale better across a set. If you need eight pieces, a clean repeating form made well beats a complicated one made in a hurry.

Lead time for a fit-out

Ask early. This is the single thing that goes wrong on office orders, because a fit-out has a handover date and art is usually remembered somewhere near the end of the schedule.

Making time is set by drying and it does not compress. A set of several pieces is not the same as one piece eight times over, but it is not much faster either.

Tell me the handover date at the first conversation. If it is not achievable I will say so then, when you still have time to do something about it.

Co-working and serviced offices

In a serviced office you usually cannot drill, and the walls belong to the operator. Leaning a framed piece on a credenza is the realistic answer, and it moves with you when the lease does.

Co-working desks get reshuffled constantly. Anything you fix to a wall there you should expect to lose.

A cabin with a door is different, and that is where a proper hung piece earns its place.

Studios, clinics and client-facing rooms

A clinic waiting room has people in it who are anxious and have nothing to do but look at the walls. That is a different brief again.

Quiet, symmetrical, nothing with a subject that could read as unlucky to anybody. Geometric work is the safe ground and I mean that as a recommendation rather than a hedge.

Salons and studios can take far more colour, because people are there by choice and usually in a good mood.

Business orders, practically

I invoice for business orders and can provide what your accounts team needs. Ask when you enquire rather than after delivery.

Pieces ship to offices across India, and internationally to the USA, the UK, Canada, Australia, the UAE and Europe. Delivery is charged on top and quoted per order.

Corporate gifting is a separate conversation from a fit-out, with different quantities and a different lead time. There is more about that on the gifts page.

Questions before ordering