It's just so wonderful being here in Yerevan,
on my third visit.
My first visit was in 1980, as a 16-year-old American kid.
And I can tell you, from my outsider perspective then,
it's a very different place, and it's very exciting to be part of this.
My great-grandmother used to tell me when I was a child,
(Armenian)
Which, for those of you who don't speak Armenian,
like myself, too well,
it means "as many languages as you speak, you're that many people."
The message there is, with greater understanding,
and with language, we can understand culture
and therefore become broader people, with a broader perspective.
What I'm talking about today though, is the opposite of that.
It's about the value of not having a broad perspective,
of not having that sort of feeling that you understand things
or feeling like things are blasé.
It's about seeing things for the first time,
and the visceral reaction we have when we see things
that are that sort of different for us, and are foreign for us and our culture.
I want to talk about how that impacted me, as a designer,
and what I saw, and what I experienced on my first trip to India, in 1989.
I went to visit some friends of mine, who lived in New Delhi,
and while I was there, I would spend my day, sort of,
ambling around the old city, Old Delhi, which was about a different a place
as I ever could imagine a place being.
My friends from Delhi, generally didn't go to the Old City,
because they felt it was crowded, there was no way to get there,
except on foot or by a rickshaw, and it was generally off-limits for them.
For me, it was just this magical place, which seemed like a place out of the past,
like a hundred years ago, or hundreds and hundreds of years ago.
There was something ancient about it that really fascinated me.
As you can see the streets are so crowded and it's really, very chaotic.
But it was that difference that for me was hugely exciting.
It was a romantic city for me, the calls to prayers echoing
throughout the small lanes.
I would walk up and down the narrow lanes and discover
all these small shops.
Every small shop had things which were handmade,
and were generally made in workshops, either right behind the stores,
or right next to them.
For me, discovering a place where things were made, was electrifying.
You know, all I had known, from my experience in America,
was things which felt very pre-packaged, or manufactured.
So to see things which actually had that handmade element,
was absolutely mesmerizing for me.
I saw shops which did printed textiles, hand-bound books,
all kinds of things, that I really couldn't imagine.
The shops that impacted me the most though,
were the shops that were making objects made in metal:
hand-forged buckets, and shovels, and scissors;
things that took such skill to create.
As a fine arts student in New York, having worked in metal,
I knew what it was like to work that material,
and it was something, really awe-inspiring for me.
I would hunt out craftsmen in the Old City,
by listening for the beating of the metal.
I'd follow rickshaws, which had interesting things on the back of them,
all as ways to find workshops where things were being made.
I discovered a small workshop, where they were doing sand-cast bronze,
and learned to smell the baked molasses, in the sand-casting process.
I would hunt out other small workshops, which were doing sand-casting,
to basically learn how the crafts happen,
to understand, what was available, in terms of crafts.
My impressions were, that the pieces had a vibration.
They had a vitality to them that I didn't recognize,
from products I had seen abroad, which all felt very manufactured-looking.
The pieces themselves were highly imperfect, I would say.
And they weren't very desirable for the local community.
People who were making hand-forged buckets, for example,
had made them that way for hundreds of years.
But the local consumers
were running to the stores and buying the imported, plastic buckets
which held water, didn't leak, were much lighter and easier to clean.
Shops which were making scissors by hand, beautifully, from my perspective,
incredibly, beautifully forged hand-made scissors,
were withering because people were buying the imported scissors made in China,
with the orange, plastic handles that cut paper really well.
So there was this whole tribe of artisans who were doing work
which was absolutely exquisite from my point of view,
but, was becoming obsolete in the local market.
From my perspective, as an artist in New York,
the only people who were making things, were other artists so,
the work that they were doing for me was utterly inspiring
and really just took my breath away.
At that point, there were no phonebooks, no directories, no tradeshows,
nothing to support the artisans.
So the only way to find them
was really to hunt them out, listen for them
and explore the Old Cities.
These are the kind of workshops I would just fall upon.
What I would do is just, watch the craftsmen stand in the shops,
there I was, sort of the ultimate American at that point,
with a baseball cap and t-shirt,
staring, and watching these guys doing their incredible work.
I think they thought I was absolutely crazy sometimes,
and wondered what I was doing.
But over time, I did drawings, in a notebook that I had,
and would show the artisans drawings of things that I had made,
and asked them, in gesticulation, and with drawings in my notebook,
what I wanted them to create.
Some of the craftsmen, like this guy here, was making cooking vessels.
The cooking vessels in India
were something that had been made for centuries.
But now, with modernization, and industrialization,
most Indian kitchens were looking to become more westernized and modern,
and were looking for pots and pans with plastic handles,
which would be easier to hold, and more convenient.
The craftsmen, which I considered national treasures,
and people who just had extraordinary skills,
were just becoming obsolete.
Generally, India, on its quest towards industrialization,
was looking for things which felt more modern, and felt more western.
So, I decided at that point I would work with the local craftsmen,
and try to make objects which celebrated what they did.
What I looked at, was the beauty of the imperfection.
Unlike the cookies we ate earlier, and the talk about design perfection,
my philosophy was that we have to celebrate the handmade process,
and look at the inherent quality, in the handmade goods.
It was something very different for India,
and also something very different for the US market at that point.
What I did, was make pieces which showed all the hammer marks,
all the hand-cut edges of the metal, and really say,
let's celebrate the humanity in these pieces,
and say, yes, we're not machine-made, that's precisely why it has value.
And it was my outsider perspective, that saw the value in that,
where these Indian artisans generally had very little pride in their work;
in fact they were embarrassed about it.
My Indian friends were also quite embarrassed
about what was available locally at that time.
It was all about getting imported goods, and how wonderful everything was abroad,
and people felt very apologetic,
and really had no sense of pride in what was available locally.
I made some buckets with those guys who were making the pots earlier,
and instead of making them in copper and brass,
I encouraged them to make them in stainless steel,
which was a material they had never worked with.
So, we made these steel pots, and they were laughing to themselves afterwards,
and finally, I understood why.
They said the pots looked like the pots they put cow dung in.
So there was a lot of back and forth, and confusion,
and giggles about the process,
but over time, we really learned a lot from each other.
And I decided to set up a workshop, there I am, there in my studio,
and it was a very exciting time, when I set up the workshop,
because we had a lot of magazines,
international magazines come and see we were doing.
We had film crews from Europe coming to photograph it.
We had a lot of encouragement from the wealthy Indian clientele
who would come to the studio, and buy my work.
But I think the ultimate for the workers, when we had Bollywood stars come
to the workshop, and buy my things.
Because finally, they realized
these things have value, and they weren't just my "rotten iron pieces",
as a lot of my Indian friends call them.
Interestingly enough, over the years, this is some of my work now,
I've had the opportunity to exhibit them all over the world.
I was voted Indian designer of the year, by "El Decor" magazine in India,
which I took as a great compliment, as a non-Indian.
I was also invited by the governemnt of India,
to represent the best of Indian handy crafts,
at trade shows in Australia, and Japan.
When the organizers found out I wasn't Indian, they were a bit shocked,
but that was a lot of fun.
And recently, at a trade show in New York, I was exhibiting my pieces,
and an Indian manufacturer came up to me and said, "Are these made in Italy?"
And I kept saying, "No, India." And he kept saying, "Italy? Italy?"
And I'd say, "No, India, India".
And it wasn't until I told him in Hindi, that he finally understood,
that these were pieces made in his own country,
that could be made with his own workers,
in his own factory.
It took an outsider's vision to prove to an Indian
what could be done in his own country.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)