About TDF Session 118
More details on the session and the Zoom link available on Registration.
About Samanda Nora Pyngrope
Samanda Nora Pyngrope is a Design Consultant hailing from Shillong in the North-Eastern part of India. She holds a Master’s Degree from the IDC School of Design at IIT Bombay as well as a Gold Medal in Interior Design from the SRM Institute of Science and Technology, Chennai. Additionally, she has experience in the field of UI/UX focusing on human-centric products and experiences. With a keen focus on highlighting and integrating Khasi culture in innovative and contemporary ways through design, technology, and innovation, Samanda’s work exemplifies her deep connection to her cultural heritage.
She has also served as a Guest Faculty at the Design Innovation Centre (DIC), North Eastern Hill University (NEHU), Shillong, where she has worked closely in advocating for design and creativity as thinking tools through teaching, discourse and workshops.
Samanda’s recent work titled “Hapdeng ki Hima – A Khasi Inspired Chess Set,” which showcases a Khasi interpretation of form, craft, and visual art, was featured in the “Celebrating North East India” exhibition organised by WNESN (Women of North East Support Network) at the Nehru Centre in London.
Synopsis – Khasi Culture and Design-led Interventions
The project and research focuses on new product development through collaboration between craftsman and designer to exercise a shared understanding of material, craft processes and a vision that is true to the culture as well as the craft involved. We follow the journey of developing individual chess pieces that lend themselves on a semantic level to invoke cultural characteristics and values, yet still identifiable for the larger purpose of playing the much-loved game of chess. Moreover, the unexpected parallels of chess with the Khasi identity – the queen as ruler of the board and the Woman as a central figure in the Khasi Matrilineal system or the knight having a counterpart in a Rooster, a sacred animal in Khasi belief systems and folklore, are all key pieces of discovery.
Ultimately, this outcome contributes in innovating new design development processes in Indian crafts as a strategy to reimagine form semantics and the nuances embedded within our very human understanding of products and crafts. With the recent incentive of the ‘Make in India’ initiative of the Indian government, there is potential to imbibe this outside-in approach of ‘human-centred crafts’.
At the same time, we can look at the process of creation as a way to reinterpret such a globally understood game and use it as a vehicle to dialogue with the world about the roots and traditions that exist in a parallel universe in the Khasi Hills.
This interpretation of the game plays on the existence of the two Himas or Kingdoms as the Khasis call it, ruled by its kings and queens, with clever strategic manoeuvres to claim power over the other. For anyone familiar to the game, yet new to Khasi culture, each piece tries to connect the familiar with the unfamiliar.
