2025 was an exciting year for us 🙂
VarnikaDesigns turned 15!
VarnikaDesigns Blog turned 10!
The Museum Memories Project turned 5!
Immense gratitude to each of you for supporting, motivating and inspiring us.
As we move into the second quarter of the 21st century, let us hope to work together to make the world a better, happier, peaceful, accessible, inclusive place with love and joy in each heart 🙏🏾
Given below is a recap to our 2025.
We started 2025 with a set of questions and then introspected on them with museum visits, partnerships and interviews with professionals from the fields of art, design, museum and crafts:
We celebrated 10 years of the VarnikaDesigns blog:
So it’s 10 years – a decade of writing a blog – this is the 160th post, 3 in the draft and a few more in my mind!!! Thank you for being a part of the VarnikaDesigns blog’s journey, for being a reader, motivator and inspiration ♥️ I have written a series on the following: Rajmata Gayatri Devi and my school MGD, Santiniketan and Indian designers, link here:
Then, we proceeded to experience the smooth confluence with art, design, music, dance, cuisine and crafts at the LLDC Winter Festival – this video and blog has interviews with skilled artisans from both Kutch and Odisha, and musicians of The Tapi Project:
We continued to understand the relevance of art, design and crafts in the creation of a happier and safer world with an in depth interview with Usha Varia, Founder, Samoolam.
This was the 4th interview on MuMe Matters: an interactive, invigorating, educational, exploratory and knowledge sharing catalytic space to initiate dialogues and spur conversations around important themes which have hitherto escaped highlight.
Then, we visited the Houseum, an exciting museum in the home of Drs Namita and Hiren Shah at Ahmedabad – you can virtually visit it here 🙂
We continued in our journey of partnerships with Museums with our vertical, Museum Musafir with Museum of Christian Art (MoCA), Goa:
By September 2025, we realised that we do need museums, we do need to preserve our heritage for posterity and we need to find solace in our shared cultures, else we will fail as a civilisation.
Nanditha Sulur, textile designer and engineer, Founder of Indu Silks and AGOWIG believes in the principles of equality, respect, reduction of carbon footprint, through regeneration of India’s exquisite handwoven silk of Bengaluru. These enterprises provide employment to weavers and a safe haven for young women who are now learning weaving from their seniors.
This was our 5th interview on MuMe Matters 🙂
We were thrilled to receive news that one of our interns, Communication Designer Kareena Vaswani, was so inspired by The Museum Memories Project that she wrote her final year thesis with her Sindhi grandparents. Our project made Kareena aware to the depth and richness of cultural heritage and its impact on her design sensibilities. https://varnikadesigns.wordpress.com/2025/09/07/designing-narratives-how-the-museum-memories-project-inspired-kareena-vaswani/
The project’s emphasis on storytelling and emotional connection has inspired her to incorporate more narrative elements into her designs, creating a book that draws on her family’s roots – her Sindhi grandparents who migrated to India after the Partition. Kareena explains how the project helped her reflect, introspect and draw upon the songs her grandparents wrote during the Partition, and how she has been able to infuse her work with a unique blend of tradition and modernity, crafting designs that resonate on a deeper level with her audience.
Thank you
Warm regards
Poulomi Das
Founder, VarnikaDesigns
The Museum Memories Project
VarnikaDesigns 
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