At Frieze London, Vikram Goyal’s new collection moves beyond metal repoussé into brocade, mother-of-pearl marquetry and hand-knotted rugs

“I wanted to create an island of calm amid the frenzy of Frieze,” begins Vikram Goyal, and anyone who has spent a week in London in October will understand what he means. Every year, Frieze London, one of the world’s leading contemporary art fairs, sets up in Regent’s Park — while PAD London, its counterpart for collectible design and decorative arts, takes over Berkeley Square. For a few days, the city brims with collectors, gallerists and curators moving between booths, openings and dinners at a relentless pace.

A short walk from PAD, inside a listed Georgian townhouse at 7 Grafton Street (also home to the Sprüth Magers gallery), Vikram is making room for something much slower. For more than two decades, the New-Delhi based designer has made collectible furniture and decorative arts with specialist artisans across India. His eponymous studio, represented by international design gallery Nilufar, is best known for its work in metal. But from 12th to 16th October, his latest exhibition Wings and Tales will fill two rooms with furniture, carpets, brocades and objects inspired by one of ancient India’s great epics, the Ramayana, in the form of a baithak — the formal drawing room of traditional Indian homes, and a word referring to the act of gathering.

Friends of (and in) the forest
Wings and Tales grew out of Soul Garden, an earlier installation Vikram presented at Design Miami. Paris at L’Hôtel de Maisons, the former Parisian home of designer Karl Lagerfeld. It drew on the Panchatantra, an ancient collection of Indian animal fables — and on Vikram’s long-standing interest in nature, craft and spirituality. “In India’s deep reservoir of culture and literature, animals have been revered as divine beings with profound spiritual significance, part of the transmigration of souls,” he explains. Referencing two paintings that stayed with him as influencing factors, he says, “It was a miniature painting I came across in a book called Garden & Cosmos - The Royal Paintings of Jodhpur; and a similar miniature in a private collection which depicted the vanaras (monkeys)in a sense of play and joyful interaction.”

Through these inspirations, Vikram looks beyond the usual protagonists Ram and Sita of the religious epic and instead zooms into the creatures who move around them across land, sea and air. The vanaras represent collective labour and the bridge they build to Lanka, the crocodiles the hidden obstacles and tests of strength along the way, and the winged vultures loyalty and resistance. "I wanted to remind the audience that we are not the only creatures in the world," Vikram says.

On his creations, many of the animals appear mid-celebration, but their festivity carries a concealed meaning. On carpets, monkeys ride rockets trailing flags — it is a scene that can be read as both preparation for war or a victory parade. Across brass screens, fabrics, and wall panels, the beauty of the forest is shadowed with unpredictable forces beyond human control. “It is a reference to the epic’s larger tension between creation and destruction, good and evil — it is a duality that reflects our larger reality of attempting to remain joyful while responding to a world under pressure of climate change and conflict,” he explains.

A cornucopia of craft
Vikram approaches the installation as a miniature version of a New Delhi interior he recently designed, pushed further towards the fantastical. Two rooms unfold like stages of the evening, leading from arrival to conversation. The effect is intimate and enveloping — a Samarkand-style rug and a brass repoussé folding screen set the scene for silk brocade and velvet seats resting on golden animal feet, arranged at a single level so the host, speakers and guests meet as equals. Brass tables, vessels and mirrors gather around the fireplace as visitors pass into the Madhuvana itself, evoked through a series of brass screens whose vine-like forms appear to sway as monkeys clamber across them. Beneath them, a trilogy of rugs depicts the epic’s realms of land, sea and air. Brass and silver-plated platters, bowls and champagne buckets (chased with jasmine) suggest a feast underway, and a mother-of-pearl chessboard sends troops of monkeys climbing across its squares. The second room hosts daily salons, where authors including Sam Dalrymple (Shattered Lands) and Gurnaik Johal (Saraswati) join historians and publishers in conversation.

Repoussé remains the studio’s signature, but this exhibition expands into hand-knotted rugs, mother-of-pearl marquetry and handmade brocade upholstery produced in collaboration with one of India’s finest brocade ateliers. The references range just as widely, from Silk Road textiles and 18th century European furniture to Art Deco elements and carpets whose bold contours borrow cloud forms of Chinese embroidery and porcelain. However, the source Vikram returns most to is Indian miniature paintings. He recently published Shringara of Shrinathji, a book of sixty miniatures from the collection of his late grandfather, Gokal Lal Mehta, reproduced for a wider audience for the first time. In Wings and Tales, he loosens the formality of that tradition, letting animals and mythical creatures appear in unexpected places across vases, stools and screens.

When Indian craft travels to international fairs like Frieze and PAD, it is often redirected to make it more legible to a Western audience. Vikram instead focuses on demonstrating the extraordinary breadth of Indian craft, bringing metalwork, casting, marquetry, weaving, brocade and embroidery into one contemporary language while keeping the richness of each of their histories intact. “In India, design and craft have always had the potential to be more than simply decorative — they carry stories, meanings and beliefs, and can create a sense of connection and even healing.” Through his curation at Wings and Tales, Vikram creates a beautiful refuge, reminding us that despite the perpetual darker reality around us, one can still create a space for imagination, nature and human connection.