Incollect Magazine - Issue 9

Incollect Magazine 23 Lél, to design a line of contemporary furniture using the age-old craft ways, materials, processes, and techniques. “I was asked to give this a contemporary twist,” Debs says. Debs found immediate inspiration in the colorful narrative art, bells, and adornments that decorate local transport vehicles, sometimes called ‘jingle’ trucks because of the jingling sound they make. Debs reasoned that the vibrant colors of the Pakistani and Afghan marbles and other semi-precious stones traditionally used for inlay designs were perfectly suited to recreate the elaborate, colorful “truck” art of the Himalayas in the form of furniture. Though she initially wanted to work with ‘truck art’, which was prevalent in Peshawar, it didn’t have the high-end, luxury feel she wanted to achieve with the marble inlay. So rather than being very literal, she used the colorful adornments of the truck art as a base of inspiration. “What if, I thought, I take the beautiful colors of the truck art and distort them, make it feel like it’s pixelated so you don't see the actual designs, and only see a degradation of colors that represent the beautiful stones from the mountain areas of the Himalayas?” The Gandhara Carapace Collection consists of tables, consoles, and chairs with simple, rounded forms covered completely in geometric mosaics crafted in the ancient art of “pietra dura.” Every work in the collection incorporates a “Carapace” polygonal marble motif that Debs explains is a “symbol of protection” made “The human hand is a voice, the artisan, a storyteller.” — Nada Debs