New York has no shortage of design galleries. But until this February, it had none dedicated to South Asian craft, where Indian designers, studios, and master artisans could stand alongside their European and Japanese counterparts on equal footing. House of Santal, steps from Rockefeller Center, is changing that.
Founded by Raksha Sanikam, the gallery opened its doors earlier this year as the first and only U.S. platform solely dedicated to representing contemporary South Asian designers. This full-scale collectable design gallery—housing 8,000 square feet of curated works—argues that South Asian design belongs on equal footing with the others on the global stage. Over the last decade, designers have started pushing beyond the surface by taking craft into the realm of structures and concepts.
"For a long time, these crafts were seen as just surfaces," Sanikam says in conversation with Robb Report India. "A fabric on a bag, a pattern on a wall. What we're looking for is something more — where the craft becomes the material itself." In the world of objects and furniture, this gap continued to exist, particularly in the U.S., widely credited as the world’s largest luxury market.
Sanikam saw the gap years before she was in a position to fill it. Her background is in venture capital. But in 2018, while visiting the India Design Show in Mumbai, she came face-to-face with works she thought were as strong as anything she'd seen from European or Japanese designers. "We had product that was as good or better than our international counterparts," she says. "[These designers] just lacked a platform of visibility."
She spent the next several years in preparation by studying interior architecture, tracking designers, and having conversations with studios across India. And then, in nine months, she built House of Santal from the ground up.
The gallery launched with 13 Indian designers (including Upasana Jain, Nynika Jhaveri, Anikesa Dhing, and Thamshangpha (Merci) Maku, to name a few), most of whom had never exhibited in the U.S. before. The selection, she reveals, was years in the making. "I've been obsessed with this industry for a long time," Sanikam confesses. "This wasn't me discovering what was coming out of India at one point in time; it happened over the years."
When one brings 13 voices under a single roof, chaos and confusion in messaging is expected. For Sanikam, though, the messaging was crystal clear: a shared commitment to what Sanikam calls ‘legacy craft’ or knowledge inherited through generations of artisans, passed down not through regional dialects and practice. Here, retail and recognition go together.
Retail, though, can be a tricky game. After all, often international buyers, including architects and designers who spec high-end pieces for clients, don’t associate India with luxury functional design. "They didn't even know this was possible," Sanikam says. "We're introducing a concept, creating a market that's new."
The Indian diaspora, meanwhile, sometimes carries a different hesitation. There exists an underlying decades-old belief that equates India with affordability. Sanikam is direct about this. "We're not competing on price. We're showcasing value." This could be the value of a craftsperson who has spent a lifetime mastering a skill or the value of a designer who has taken that knowledge and pushed it somewhere new. "Why are we discounting our craftspeople? A European artisan gets paid significantly more for comparable work. Why should it be any different here?"
Beyond the 8,000 square feet of physical space, House of Santal also has an online platform for discovery and collecting. In doing so, it expands the reach for buyers and collaborators beyond New York, too. But Sanikam is clear that the gallery space is irreplaceable, especially at this price point. "You want to sit on it, touch it, feel the quality," she says. "Above a certain level, that physical experience becomes more and more important."
In five years, Sanikam wants "South Asian" and "ultra luxury" to be automatic associations, sans raised eyebrows and questions about why something costs what it costs. "I don't want that question to exist anymore," she says. "I want people to think South Asian and automatically think: these people know how to do it at the highest level."
She knows that credibility is built slowly. "On a good day, I can convince five people," she laughs. "Not all 40." But with each exhibition, the argument gets stronger.