Chocolate imbued with Indian flavours and silk embroidery art on sale at Asia House Fair
Chocolates from The Chocolatier and silk embroidery art from Art Rickshaw, pictured above, are among the products which will be on sale at the Asia House Fair, which takes place from 3 to 6 March. Copyright The Chocolatier and Art Rickshaw
Chocolate imbued with Indian flavours and silk embroidery art on sale at Asia House Fair
23 February 2016
A range of interesting exquisite gifts and items from across Asia ranging from shawls, textiles, kimonos and handicrafts to Indian-inspired chocolate, Japanese garden tools and Southeast Asian silk embroidery art, will be on sale at the Asia House Fair, which returns to Marylebone this year from 3 to 6 March.
For the first time this year London-based Art Rickshaw will be selling contemporary handcrafted 100 per cent silk embroidery art from Asia; hand-painted Tibetan Mandalas and Thangkas; hand-dyed Indonesian Batik art; and Mithila Art (also known as Madhubani art) from Bihar in India, at the Fair.
The artwork ranges in price from £60 to £3,000 a piece. Bhavika Depala, who runs Art Rickshaw, will have a space inside the Asia House Gallery at the Fair. She does not have a shop and only sells the artwork at galleries, pop-up fairs and online. She started Art Rickshaw in 2012.
Silk embroidery art is richly-coloured and hand-stitched using fine quality split silk threads by craftsmen in Vietnam and China. Depala is the authorised UK representative of XQ Vietnam, one of the of the foremost silk embroidery houses in Vietnam. She sells and exhibits framed paintings of the intricate embroideries depicting different scenes and images. “They look like paintings but they are in fact made of silk thread,” she said.
Guanyin, 100 per cent hand embroidery, made of pure silk. Copyright Art Rickshaw
“All the art work we are selling represents the traditional skills of Asian artists handed down the generations. These are rare skills often handed down from mother to daughter. Embroidery has a long history in Asia and these skills are a rare find in the West,” she explained. “They are all dying art forms and I want to preserve them,” she said.
Traditionally, silk embroidery artists in China have depicted birds such as cranes or koi fish, but Depala She opts for more contemporary pieces which appeal to the Western market.
The Tibetan Mandala paintings and Thangkas that she sells are by London-based Tibetan artist Ugyen Choephell. These Mandalas are hand painted on thin canvas with natural mineral paints including real gold paint.
Mandalas are spiritual symbols that represent the cosmos and are used by monks to aid meditation. In the West they are often used as decorative wall hangings.
Mandala of Amitabha, made using natural mineral & genuine gold paint using the traditional rules of iconometry by Ugyen Choephell. Copyright Art Rickshaw
“I’ve sold a lot of these already. There are only three pieces left which will be on sale at the Fair,” she said. She will also sell Tibetan Thangkas – Tibetan paintings that depict the historical events and life of Buddha, traditionally hung in monasteries that are becoming more popular in the West.
Indonesian Batik art which comes from Yogyakarta in Java is also in her collection. “Batik is a technique of wax-resist dyeing applied to fabric. In Java, It’s an ancient art form and many artists still use natural dyes such as turmeric and other natural plants and minerals,” she explained. “Some of the finest batik cloth and designs still comes from there,” she said.
The Mithila art she sells comes from Bihar and is hand-painted on handmade paper with acrylic paint using a fine nib to create intricate motifs. “They used to be the traditional wall and floor paintings of houses done by women to mark special occasions such as weddings and festivals. These are quite popular and I have only got three pieces left which will be on sale at the Fair. A lot of it tends to be of the Hindu God Krishna and community and village life – and I think that really appeals to people here. They are all done by women,” she said.
She said she was working hard to ensure the artists’ names are on their artwork. “Traditionally they don’t promote artists as they are part of local artist clusters. I am trying to get the names of artists on a lot more of the pieces we sell,” she explained
Depala, whose day job is a transformation consultant in London, said: “I’m self-employed and work on contracts. I get the opportunity to travel inbetween the contracts and that is when I source my products.” Her previous exhibitions have been at The Artsdepot, Gallery 83 in Belgravia and 54 The Gallery in Mayfair, London.
The artwork, which reflects the lifestyle and cultures of different communities around the world, is likely to appeal to people who are looking for something unique and rare, enjoy travelling and collecting traditional and historical artworks, or who wish to help preserve dying art forms.
On the Saturday of the Fair there will be tastings of The Chocolatier’s chocolate, which is inspired by Indian flavours and spices, as well as a talk by its founder award-winning chocolatier Aneesh Popat. The talk will provide an overview of his unique range, a brief history of chocolate, the geography of how chocolate came about and how it should be tasted.
Born in the UK, British Indian Aneesh Popat started his company The Chocolatier from his kitchen in London in 2011 aged just 23 with help from his mother. “I started off selling it at school fetes and the like. It was very much a one-man operation with help from my Mum and I would spend my time walking the streets of London trying to persuade people to buy them.”
Now The Chocolatier is a four-man strong operation based in Bedfordshire and his mother is one of his full-time employees. The 28-year-old supplies six different Michelin-starred restaurants including London’s Gymkhana, a few hotels and department stores such as Harrods, Selfridges and Harvey Nichols, as well as delicatessens. Like Art Rickshaw, he does not have a physical shop and sells his products online.
So what is the USP of his chocolate? “We create fine chocolates. We use really exquisite chocolate originating from different countries around the world, adding spices and tropical fruits from India to add flavour.”
“Every chocolate we sell has some sort of spice in it,” he said citing as an example one that has hand-rolled Himalayan tips of tea; others contain spices succh as chillies, mace, cardamom, saffron and exotic fruits such as guava and papaya.
“India is amazing for the way they add spices to everything,” he said. He spent two years in India between 2009 and 2011 studying comparative world philosophy after his first degree in the UK. “I was not inspired by Indian chocolates, he said. I was inspired by Indian spices.
“I was in fact very uninspired by the chocolate in India and that was inspiration really to start The Chocolatier,” he continued. “It’s a huge problem for NRIS (non-resident Indians) as when they come back to India they don’t have the selection of chocolate there is overseas – what there is is expensive and Western-imported. There are a very small number of people in India that are making chocolate from scratch but there is nothing mass market.”
His chocolate bars, which are inspired by Indian flavours, include a fiery red chilli chocolate with woody cinnamon dusted candied orange peel, as well as a beautiful jewel-like seed-studded chocolate bar with a variety of textured seeds including fennel and sesame seeds (great as an after dinner digestive, he said) and a saffron and hazelnut chocolate bar. One chocolate bar has Chai Tea in it whilst another has a combination of candied orange, Earl Grey and roasted almonds.
An orange and pumpkin seed chocolate bar. Copyright: The Chocolatier
Popat admits he didn’t have any formal training in how to make chocolate. “I taught myself using books, watching YouTube and basically lots of practice,” he said.
Loose truffles cost from £2 a piece and the bars range from £10 each and three for £23.
The truffles are all water-based using no cream or butter. “They are cleaner on the palate and truer to cocoa,” he said. You can really appreciate it and as a result it has half the calories and a quarter of the fat. There are no additives. It’s all fresh and natural,” he said.
He also sells unusual drinking chocolates such as 23 carat gold drinking chocolate made with flakes of the finest edible 23ct gold, rich saffron, aromatic cardamom and shavings of pistachio. He also sells cacao tea, cardamom and coffee drinking chocolate, Aztec spiced drinking chocolate (with cinnamon and chilli) and rose petal drinking chocolate.
Aztec spiced drinking chocolate. Copyright: The Chocolatier
It’s no surprise that The Chocolatier, which got the Bronze Award in the International Chocolate Awards 2015, also supplies the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and the Maharajah of Jodhpur.
naomi.canton@asiahouse.co.uk
The Asia House Fair takes place from 3 to 6 March. For more information about the Fair and to see the full list of stallholders click here. A preview of the stalls will take place on Thursday 3 March. To register click here.
