Lending to a Legacy

Journal, personal history

As a creative professional living at home, my personal and professional lives can be quite isolated from each other. They pat my back when I achieve something, but on a day-to-day basis there isn’t a lot of crossover between my life as a designer and my home environment. Having said that, I've always felt most acknowledged when a personal friend or family member asks me for help or my opinion on something.

My great grandfather built this home for his children in 1932, he was 32 years at the time. Beginning as a clerk, he went on to become the first industrialist of my home town, Alwar, Rajasthan. He was also a close advisor to the king.

He practically built half the city — the main markets and areas of trade, the factories. Therefore for mail, or anyone to reach him, a formal address was never necessary. Over the years, the newer generations have ridden the wave of his legacy. But as time has passed, the city has expanded, and we’ve felt the need to officially mark our home address.

I consider it my biggest honour to have had a role in designing a name tile for my family’s ancestral home. We decided to officially name it after my great grandfather. For, that is also how the house has been generally referred to around town.

Hopefully better pictures will follow, but here’s one from the day it was installed. The name is in Devanagari, and the official address (that I’d rather not share here, is on the pillar opposite) is in both Latin & Devanagari / Hindi & English. I used Murty for the address tile, and seen here is a work in progress typeface. Aside from everything else— this project has made me push an old idea forward, for which I’m grateful. 

The oldest and youngest members of the extended family recently unveiled it.

To clarify— we used a CNC machine to have this carved. I did not have the time or expertise to carve this myself and there was little to no room for error. But this was an extremely humbling experience.

Haveli’s name tile on installation day;