FOCUSTiipoi
Longpi cookwareAt what point does a craft become an industry? That’s one of the many questions Tiipoi – a design studio in London and Bangalore that works with Indian crafts – tries to answer with its latest project. Longpi is a collection of cookware and tableware made in collaboration with Mathew Sasa, a master craftsman from the remote village of Longpi, near Myanma in north east India. Sasa’s father Machihan is nationally respected for his beautiful and functional pots, awarded the ‘Shilp Guru’ in 2008 – the highest accolade for craft.
Sasa tried to recreate the process of making the pots in Delhi, but there were many challenges, not least the problems of firing pots in open fires on the city streets. With Tiipoi, he is now reinventing the process in an attempt to industrialise and standardise it, with a range of pots being made in a factory in Bangalore, with a specially designed kiln that will allow the highly desirable pots to be made at scale, lifting his village craft pottery into a much more lucrative, sustainable business.