Why does this feel familiar?
After a year of seeing people interact with our designs, I’ve been thinking a little more about what makes them resonate.
I’m often asked if I’m from Iran or whether our pieces are Portuguese. Someone will see a motif and confidently place it somewhere completely different from where I had imagined it. And honestly, I love that.
It got me thinking about our designs and about what happens when something feels familiar, even when we can’t quite place why.
One of the things I’ve noticed most since starting Studio Purani is how differently people see themselves in the pieces. Different cultures, different generations, different backgrounds. A motif that feels immediately familiar to one person can look entirely new to another. And yet, there’s often a moment of recognition: I’ve seen something like this before.
That feeling is part of why we created these pieces in the first place.
The collection was never meant to represent South Asian culture in its entirety. That would be impossible. Instead, I was drawn to particular patterns, objects and forms that felt familiar to me - things I grew up around.
But the more I think about it, the more I wonder whether that familiarity is mine alone.
Craftsmanship has been travelling for centuries. Motifs, techniques and objects moved along trade routes, crossing borders and oceans, where they were adapted, reinterpreted and made their own in new places. A pattern might begin somewhere, travel somewhere else, and take on an entirely different character along the way.
Maybe that’s why something can feel strangely familiar without belonging neatly to one place.
And perhaps that’s what I find most interesting about craft: it gives us a way to see how connected we’ve always been. Not in a broad, abstract sense, but through the little things - a pattern, a shape, a way of painting a line, an object that somehow feels like it belongs in your home.
As I get ready for my annual trip to Pakistan, I have a couple of books on my reading list and, naturally, a growing list of questions I want to chase down while I’m there.
I want to understand a little more about where these motifs travelled, how they changed along the way, and why certain forms of craftsmanship seem to spark recognition in people far beyond where they originated.
I don’t quite have the answers yet. But I have a feeling there’s something worth exploring there.
And maybe, in looking more closely at where these designs came from, I’ll learn a little more about why they feel familiar to so many of us.
— Nairah
