Across homes, workshops, train stations, and street corners, India’s design language reveals itself in stainless steel thalis, terracotta pots, stackable storage, and the familiar chai glass. These objects are often so commonplace that they fade into the background of daily life. For TIIPOI, they are starting points. The studio studies their proportions, material choices, and everyday utility, treating them as examples of design thinking shaped by use rather than formal theory.

Founded in 2013 and operating between Bangalore and London, TIIPOI examines how everyday objects move across cultures and contexts. Its name comes from “teapoy,” a three-legged stool that circulated widely during the British colonial period, travelling between households and geographies. The reference reflects the studio’s interest in the movement and adaptation of objects over time.

The studio’s collections span homewares, decorative objects and textiles, produced in collaboration with craft communities across India. Ceramic pieces draw on the black pottery traditions of Nizamabad, while metalware is developed with spinning workshops in Moradabad. Wood turning practices from Channapatna and glass blowing expertise from Firozabad also inform the studio’s material vocabulary, alongside textile weaving traditions found across several regional clusters. Through these collaborations, familiar techniques are applied to objects intended for contemporary homes.

Instead of drastically changing these references, the studio works through careful adjustments in scale, finish and material. Everyday forms are refined and reinterpreted while retaining the functional logic that made them enduring in the first place.

Through this approach, TIIPOI brings attention to the design intelligence already present in everyday Indian objects. By reworking forms long found in kitchens, markets and workshops, the studio highlights systems of making that continue to shape daily life. Its work ultimately suggests that contemporary design can emerge not only from new ideas, but from looking closely at the objects that have quietly worked well for generations.