Creating unique jewellery out of leftover clothes

It was her grandmother’s love for recycling old items and making handcrafted dolls out of scraps of cloth, that inspired Dakshayini Gowda to try her hand at accessory design.
She always loved playing with fabric, and while at college, would often stitch kurtas and tops using old bags or any piece of cloth that she could lay her hands on.

About a year ago, she stumbled upon the idea of making jewellery out of fabric scraps that could eventually be trashed. But this time, it was not any old torn cloth that caught her fancy but the rich jewel tones and brocaded beauty of banarasi silks.

Gowda’s accessory line ‘Varanasi from Sanchali’ is vibrant in its colours, motifs and design. It consists of earrings and pendants made out of scraps of rich brocade material thrown away by tailoring shops and boutiques, which she juxtaposes with anything from beads and bits of wire to broken bangle fragments, seeds and tree bark to create startling, textured pieces of jewellery.

She retails out of lifestyle and accessory stores in Bangalore, Delhi and Mumbai and also sends consignments to the US and the UK — most of the contracts won through word-of-mouth recommendations from women who have worn and loved her designs. Starting at Rs350 for a pair of earrings, her creations are eminently affordable.

Gowda sources the material for the pieces from the tailors and designers who scrap leftover fabric. She confesses that it has been a challenge to convince many boutiques in Bangalore to give away, or even sell, scraps that would otherwise be trashed.

While Gowda designs each individual piece, they are crafted by a band of women from a village in Srinivasapura taluk of Kolar district about 120 km from Bangalore. When she embarked on this project a year ago, she identified about 60 village women and trained them for a week in crafting the accessories. It’s a win-win situation for the women — they work from their homes and earn more than they would have done working on the fields.

Empowering these women was always a part of Gowda’s plan, and the profits from this venture go towards funding another project which is also close to her heart — her ‘travelling museum’. Trained in museology and archaeology — she did masters in both subjects at MS University, Baroda — Gowda works towards bringing history closer to the lives of children from government schools.

Her mobile museum consists of terracotta models of artifacts from the Harappa and Mohenjodaro civilisations, and she travels with them to schools where students can touch, feel and even create the perfect models of relics of ancient civilisations.

She may have more than her share of degrees and educational qualifications under her belt, but Gowda calls herself a drifter who never set out to achieve anything. “Today’s kids with their goals and plans and career planning scare me,” she says. “I set out with no clear idea in my head about where I wanted to go and how I would ‘use’ this knowledge.”

But in her work with accessories made out of recycled material and her unique travelling museums, her passion for recycling and design and for history and its showcasing have all come together beautifully.