Universality is the most important thing in design, says Gunjan Gupta

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chamak-dhamak (essentially too much shine and colours)". That's why the Delhi-based product designer and founder of brand Ikkis ensured her homeware collection presented at the Milan Design Week last month was "anti-ethnic". The range of 21 glasses, cups and plates—all displayed in a room that looked like an organised kirana store (curation was done by Maria Cristina Didero, curatorial director of Miami Design Week)—can be best described as elevated everyday items that highlight Indian craftsmanship in a simple, yet sophisticated form.

Like the Chai Stem Glass that has a cutting chai glass attached to a champagne glass-like brass stem. Or the brass Bindu Thali enamelled and turned into an art piece. "There's nothing Indian about it," Gupta tells when we meet at her studio, full of exposed walls, in Delhi's Chhattarpur area.

"Yet it's all India. We are cool, we are contemporary; we are not ethnic." In an interview with Lounge, Gupta talks about her showcase, the lack of experiments with product design in India and the need for restraint. Edited excerpts: Ettore Sottsass, the grand master of Italian design.

India inspired him in many ways, especially the colours. I like to play with forms rather than patterns. Our form has never really been given a chance.

Like the lota or matka, which is so simple and timeless. Our designers try to tinker with it, making it square, rectangular... so they can put their mark on it.

Why would you do that to something that's so perfect. Even I tried doing that, but I couldn't. So, in the end, I just sliced it to turn it into a dabba of katoris.

It's the same form, in another form. So sometimes you just have to leave things be. Practise restraint, and that discernment can only come when you