Black Pottery and the Return of Material Attention: Nimmit’s Expansion into Clay

Black pottery has always carried a certain weight in the Indian craft landscape. Its surface is not decorative in the conventional sense. It absorbs light rather than reflecting it. It records touch. It reveals process. With its latest collection, Nimmit moves into this material territory, extending its existing work in textiles and object design into pottery.

Founded by Manish Shah, Nimmit has so far been associated primarily with textile-based practices such as block printing, Ajrakh, kantha, and eco printing. These techniques have formed the basis of the brand’s home textiles, garments, and collectible objects. The introduction of a Black Pottery collection marks a shift in medium, but not in intent. The emphasis remains on hand production, material origin, and artisan-led processes.

The pottery is produced using traditional forming and firing methods, where each piece passes through multiple stages of manual handling. Clay preparation, shaping, surface treatment, and firing are carried out without mechanised uniformity. This results in subtle variations across objects. Edges are not perfectly identical. Surfaces carry tonal inconsistencies. These are not treated as defects but as evidence of process.

Manish Shah describes this in direct terms. “At Nimmit, we believe luxury lies in intention, not excess. The Black Pottery collection is about slowing down and appreciating the beauty of handmade objects. Each piece carries the marks of the artisan’s hand and the time it took to create it.”

This position reflects a broader shift taking place across certain segments of Indian lifestyle design, where material process is becoming central again. For a period, many handcrafted objects were adapted to mimic industrial finish in order to align with global retail expectations. What is emerging now is a reversal of that approach. The process itself is allowed to remain visible.

Nimmit’s move into pottery also expands the brand’s material vocabulary. Clay behaves differently from textile. It has structural permanence. It cannot be folded, dyed, or layered in the same way. Its form is fixed at the point of firing. This changes the nature of design decisions. Form must be resolved earlier. Surface cannot be altered later without consequence.

The collection consists of functional and decorative objects intended for interior settings. These include vessels, containers, and sculptural forms that operate within domestic environments. Their presence is quiet. They do not rely on applied ornament. Their visual character comes from proportion, silhouette, and surface density.

Nimmit’s production model continues to rely on collaboration with artisan communities. These relationships are not structured as one-time manufacturing arrangements but as ongoing working partnerships. The brand’s previous textile collections have followed this framework, and the pottery collection adopts the same approach.

This continuity is important because pottery, like textile, depends on accumulated technical knowledge. Firing temperatures, clay composition, and finishing techniques are learned through repetition over time. The outcome cannot be separated from the skill of the maker.

The brand also maintains its existing material approach, working primarily with natural inputs and small-batch production environments. This limits volume but preserves process control. It also ensures that the objects remain tied to specific making contexts rather than anonymous factory output.

Shah’s background as a second-generation textile entrepreneur provides a link between industrial understanding and craft practice. His work with Nimmit has involved translating traditional processes into objects positioned within contemporary interiors. The move into pottery can be seen as part of this ongoing expansion.

What makes black pottery particularly significant is its resistance to surface embellishment. Its finish is achieved through firing conditions rather than applied colour. This gives it a density that feels closer to architecture than decoration.

In interior environments, such objects function less as accessories and more as anchors. They stabilise space. They absorb visual noise. Their presence is physical rather than ornamental.

The introduction of the Black Pottery collection does not represent a departure for Nimmit as much as a continuation through a different material. The underlying structure remains the same. Traditional processes, artisan collaboration, and material-led design remain central.

What changes is the medium through which these ideas are expressed.

Available at: https://www.nimmit.in/

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