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French carousels, a recurrent fixture across carnivals and fairs, as well as a dramatic insertion within films and plays, have, for generations, continued to impart joy amongst children and adults alike. Clinging onto the many characters in the carousel, while they dance their way in a patterned circle, is a delight for those experiencing it as well as those witnessing from a distance. Now, imagine these billowing movements of a carousel on a smaller scale, with animated characters designed to satisfy a concerted theme. A series of such animated carousels, inspired by the elements of castles, forests, monasteries, circuses and mountains, recently caught my eye. Visualised and made by Shed, a multidisciplinary design studio based in Surat, in India, these carousels are designed to twist and twirl mechanically, in engaging patterns.
Shed, founded and headed by Indian architect Priyanka Shah, first began as a private practice to explore hands-on making processes. Since the studio was stationed in the basement of Shah’s family’s factory in Surat, which functioned both as a garage and shed, the name stuck and was adopted as the formal moniker for the practice that engages in the design of objects, furniture and spaces, with a special focus on hands-on making processes and the circularity of materials. For their series of collectible carousels, too, the studio employed similar research-based processes.
While Shed’s The Adventure Begins Carousel (2023) includes various storybook-inspired characters, shapes, elements and animals arranged to depict the anticipation of a family awaiting the birth of their baby, the studio’s A Beautiful World Carousel (2023) serves as an ode to the balancing act undertaken by nature to ensure the stable coexistence of land, water, mountains, plains and various natural forces. The Reaching for the Skies Carousel (2023), one of Shah’s favourites, is a piece wherein the studio depicts things that tend to rise or fly away, such as clouds, hot air balloons, kites, balloons, birds, Ferris wheel and skyscrapers. For both A Beautiful World Carousel and The Reaching for the Skies Carousel, Shah utilised Paperclay, a material developed by the studio. Other nature-inspired pieces by the studio include the Enchanted Forest Carousel (2023) and the Mountain Carousel (2022). While the former is inspired by the fantastical and exaggerated portrayals of the landscapes of forests, trees and flowers, the latter portrays a rugged and hilly landscape, hand-sculpted out of marquetry blocks.
The Monastery Carousel (2022) is the result of an exploration of relief-making in wood, whilst also depicting the many scenes and entities observed in Buddhist monasteries, such as the traditional prayer wheel and meditative gestures. The Castle Carousel (2022), on the other hand, is a sculptural design inspired by old fairy tales. The characters of this tale are depicted in the carousel via entities crafted out of cotton scraps or hand embroidered fabrics. Some other carousels from this series include the Folktale Carousel (2022), the Circus Carousel (2023), the Indian Wedding Carousel (2023), Sweet Carousel (2022), 2 Diamond Carousels (2022), and many more.
STIR engaged in a candid conversation with Shed’s founder Priyanka Shah, in order to better understand the procedures employed by the design studio to build the carousels. Edited excerpts from the interview are as follows:
Almas Sadique: What was the underlying thought that led to the initiation of the Carousel series?
Priyanka Shah: The Carousel series was never planned at the outset the way it panned out. The first carousel happened because a family friend wanted to gift her infant grandson with a piece for his first birthday. She came in with a rough idea, referencing a moving carousel she had come across in a French toyshop. We got really excited with the possibility of making toys that could be mechanically manoeuvred, especially for young ones. Anything to substitute the commonplace battery operated, motorised and mass-produced toys flooding our material landscapes. For this first piece, we took a whole four months to develop the final design, to understand proportions, make technical parts like coordinated gear sets and make it move smoothly. The next few commissions came organically from other people seeing and wanting similar pieces for themselves. Each new carousel presented a whole new opportunity to iterate new creative possibilities and mechanisms. The outer visual was an obvious area to really explore techniques of making and imaginations that needn’t be logical! We even told all our clients we wouldn’t repeat a design again. It was that open endedness and the trust that so many different people chose to put in us that helped us push the envelope with this series.
Almas: Tell us about the process employed to build each carousel - from brainstorming to the finalisation of design and then making it.
Priyanka: Whenever somebody approaches us to build a carousel, the first step is to understand what they want thematically and materially. This is a pretty long discussion where very abstract ideas are brought into exact elements or concepts that we want to explore. After this, there is a deep dive into visual sketches and mechanisms. Usually, a title emerges here. This helps us tie all seemingly different ideas together coherently. There was one series of carousels where we wrote a list of idioms or phrases related to nature: on cloud nine, come rain or shine, reaching for the skies and so on. This helps us derive ‘action’ words: I like those more than nouns because it helps us think about movements.
Once we all agree on a sketch, we jump into production. We prototype parts which need to be figured, especially movement-based parts. Simultaneously, we jump into deriving proportions by physically stacking pieces of wood. The individual elements are sculpted by hand based on the proportions that we have decided. The more carousels we have made, the better we have gotten at understanding proportions and bringing ambitious visuals together. Each carousel is like a cross between an animation set, architectural model and toy. Materiality decisions are based on how to realise proportions most effectively.
Almas: Where is the wood used for the carousels sourced from?
Priyanka: Most of our wood comes from excesses in construction sites, or old structures taken down. Our usual sawmill guys know about our penchant for different species of woods because of the varieties of colours they lend. They’ll put wood aside for us that they cannot sell to their typical site contractors. We’ll pick up offcuts, leftovers, parts of trunks which are naturally hollowed out and hence difficult to prepare for larger construction work.
Almas: Which carousel did you enjoy working on the most?
Priyanka: The carousel for a Gaushala was one which literally shifted paradigms at the studio. This was the first carousel that we approached ambitiously at the studio to add secondary movements, hand-sculpted animals and many other features. There were sketches that we started with and agreed on. After that, it was all about populating the entire piece richly with details we built by hand. There was only one carpenter at the studio at that point and a looming deadline for the piece which needed to go to the client on time for his birthday. Everybody at the studio then, about five interns, three designers along with our lathe team all got hands-on and finished the piece, some of them handling chisels for the first time ever. Before this, we (especially me) operated from fears about production and expectations from the team were very different; everything changed when Imran in our design team took charge and deployed mini tasks to different people in the studio to finish this piece. Everything we knew featured in the carousel: wood chiselling for the tree foliage, marquetry for the bird wings, embroidery on wood, inlays, animal sculptures, puppetry-inspired movements. It was a pivotal moment and we got much more ambitious with our design and making approach, overall after this project. A lot of fear vanished.
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