WITH their roots in Bengaluru, design studio Oorjaa first started as a handmade paper studio in 1998. They had founder and designer Jenny Pinto at the helm, and the brand featured sustainable lamps created in-house, with over 100 pieces made from faux cement, paper and cork.
Now, with their partnership with Radeesh Shetty of The Purple Turtles, the brand is launching in Chennai while being committed to their ethos of ‘living lightly’. Over the last 20 years, the Oorjaa unit has grown into a family 35 artisans and three designers since its inception and have lit up several homes, hotels and made art installations. We caught up with founder Jenny Pinto to chat about the brand, and what makes it so unique. “It was called Oorjaa only in 2017. When I started making handmade paper and designing paper lights in 1998, they were just sold as Jenny Pinto’s lights,” says Jenny. “It was small and experimental then, but paper as a whole was an unexplored material and I was fascinated at how much one could do with it.” Jenny then began making paper from all sorts of fibres like banana, sisal, mulberry and grass, but there was nothing that compared to banana fibre paper, she says.
At the Purple Turtles in Chennai, you can find a wide array of products similar to the product range in Bengaluru. “How we make this range, is as important as what we make. From lokta and banana fibre paper to upcycled cork and quarry waste, our collections delve into materials to celebrate their essence and combine them in ways to create interesting textures, colours, form and light,” explains Jenny. The designer mentions that one of her favourite pieces is the meander from the paper collection, that is hand sculpted from handcrafted banana fibre paper and rendered into a hanging lamp. “It is an ephemeral source of light, ideal for mood lighting in homes and hospitality spaces.”
Find unique products like their copper folio domical pendant lamp and cubiform block spot pendant lamp from their Wabi Sabi collection and wabi sabi fibre-concrete lamps in a curated palette of rich blues, rusty pinks and deep ochres, anchored by cement grey, from their Oxide collection. Oorjaa’s Urbania is an interplay of line, light and material that juxtaposes the softness of handmade paper shades. Here, you can find pieces like the origami mushroom pendant lamp and the coco flower pendant lamp.
Starting at `3,900.
At The Purple Turtles, Alwarpet.