“Every time we visited [Darcha], the landscape had transformed completely. Within six months, I had seen everything: rain, snow, incredible summers. It made us realise how transient nature is there and how constantly it shifts and evolves,” shares Saurabh Maurya, who co-founded the menswear label MARGN alongside Ranjit Yadav. Maurya won the Himalayan Knot Design Prize, presented by Vogue India and Royal Enfield Social Mission, and that journey took him across craft communities in the mountains, engaging with the artisans there and their textile traditions.
The experience led to The Fifth Gesture, an installation at London Craft Week that brings together found objects, sculptural forms and textile works to examine how craft becomes a form of protection, repair and continuity in Himalayan communities.
“During the project [leading up to the Himalayan Knot Design Prize], I had to identify a community to work with. One of my mentors connected me with a group of women who already practised traditional Himalayan knitting,” explains Maurya. The women he met were the Jomche, an all-women self-help group and artisan collective based in Darcha, a village in the upper Himalayas, who would go on to become key contributors for Maurya. The designer worked closely with the artisans, sitting with them as they knitted, listening to old stories and observing how craft moved through their everyday lives. Throughout the process, the group also worked on hand-knitting and crochet for the installation, creating textile pieces that became central to the project.
He began to notice just how profoundly prayer and rituals were embedded in everyday life. “They pray while working, while cooking, while knitting,” he says. “It’s not to do with religion, but more about being connected to something much bigger than themselves. For example, there’s a philosophy where they always cross the road from the left and come back from the right, like taking a parikrama while walking,” he explains. These observations formed the foundation of The Fifth Gesture.
The Fifth Gesture refers to forms of prayer beyond familiar devotional gestures, from joining hands and bowing down to raising hands or touching the forehead. It was developed over a year-long engagement with the region and its people. And now, these compositions, inspired by Himalayan rituals, are on display thousands of miles away from their source material. Presented in collaboration with Royal Enfield Social Mission as part of The Himalayan Knot, its textile and pastoral land conservation project, The Fifth Gesture is showing at London Craft Week from 11 to 17 May.
