Mumbai's Culture Collect debuts The Vault, a wildlife-inspired collection featuring handcrafted sculptures like Veer, The Threaded Tiger, and MahaMegh, a one-of-a-kind elephant. Each piece celebrates India's craft heritage and is available in limited editions.
A new Mumbai-based venture wants to make the case that India's craft traditions belong in the same conversation as fine art, not beside it. The Vault by Culture Collect, founded by Karan Sancheti, builds its debut Wildlife collection around a straightforward premise. Take an endangered or symbolically loaded Indian animal, hand it to craftspeople working in regional textile and embroidery traditions, and release the result as a numbered, limited-edition sculpture rather than a mass-produced object.
The collection's centrepiece is Veer, The Threaded Tiger, a Bengal tiger sculpture built from nine regional craft traditions stitched together across a single frame, conceived as a geographic journey from Kashmir at the neck to Kanyakumari at the tail. It stands 16 inches tall on a 23-by-12-inch base and is priced at Rs 1,75,000 plus GST, limited to 50 pieces. Godawan, a considerably larger and rarer piece built around the Great Indian Bustard, stands 44.5 inches tall, limited to just nine units, and is priced at Rs 6,15,000 plus GST. At the top of the collection sits MahaMegh, a 30-inch royal-purple elephant worked in Aari, Zardozi, pita and tassel embroidery, offered as a single, one-of-one piece at Rs 7,90,000 plus GST. Three further pieces, a Ladakhi-themed work titled La-dwags kyi Sems-nyid, The Sapphire of Gooty and The Bungali Bagh, round out the current line-up, though detailed specifications for those three weren't available on the brand's site at the time of writing.
Every piece ships with complimentary delivery within India, complimentary glass casing through Diwali, and complimentary installation for Mumbai-based buyers, with post-purchase customisation available once a buyer is approved through the brand's waitlist system.