It was a cold Delhi day in December 2023. Maitri had recently quit a job in PR and decided to pursue pottery full time, and this was her first proper assessment of her to-be studio at home in Delhi.
Only, the studio wasn’t yet a studio. Like an amorphous lump of clay, it carried the promise of things to come, it whispered to her of a one-day kiln and rows of shelves filled with bespoke pieces of pottery and of the red rays of the sun investing her creations with their inner flame.
But the whispers didn’t hide the fact that the room had zero windows. It had no electrical connections beyond the one light, one fan minimum. Even the ceiling wasn’t a proper ceiling; it was one of those rooms that so many houses have that has never found a purpose, and that moves through its existence as a space whose time has not come yet.
Today, a little over two years since that day, Maitri has a pottery studio where she crafts character-filled clay creations, where she teaches and dreams and creates. And the journey involved wearing multiple hats and navigating bureaucracy and thousands of hours, but she’s now at a place where her art is recognizably her: authentically quirky, Indian at heart, and elegant.
I turn Indian nostalgia into ceramics.
The Algani (अलगनी) collection
As a third culture kid, Maitri has lived and grown up in several different countries. She was born in Delhi and spent a substantial portion of her formative years moving between India and cities across the world every 2-3 years. Change became a constant, but certain things stayed with her, anchoring her fundamental identity. Clotheslines became one of the aspects that kept her rooted and reminded her of home (even when she spotted one abroad, thousands of miles from India), both visually and in terms of what they represent.
Clotheslines always felt like soft portals into the lives behind them. Returning to India as a third-culture kid, they became small anchors, reminders of who I am and where I come from.
These pieces carry those stories: soft fabrics turned into hand-drawn lines, sunlit memories carved into clay.
We are drawn to things that contain fragments of simpler times. What could call back more evocatively to the unworried afternoon oases that dotted the landscapes of our childhood than images of crowded clotheslines used to decorate bowls and tumblers?
A Studio Maitri piece transfers things across space and time. You see an image of a piece of clothing that looks extremely comfortable, and you feel a warm glow of comfort inside: a glow that is mostly caused by the crackling campfire of nostalgia, but that is intensified by the visual stimulus of how much you’d like to wear the virtual garment that’s drying on the virtual line painted on your new favorite article of crockery.
The decision to make clothes the main characters of the अलगनी collection has powerful ramifications. Clothes are the only articles of commerce that are mostly bought by people for other people; less than 50% of all the articles of clothing ever sold are bought by people for themselves. From swaddling clothes for babies to gifts to technically-stolen-but-let’s-not-talk-about-that oversized hoodies to t-shirts that are bought in bulk for families because they were on sale at the irresistible price of ₹300 for ten pieces, most clothes come to their owners through acts of love. And that love is also transferred to the viewer of any of the items in the अलगनी collection; you cannot look at it without smiling.
Maitri has always been fascinated by how much laundry and clotheslines reveal about the people in their homes. How their days were, are there children, babies, old people, is everyone on holiday…the placement, patterns, and colors have always been close to her heart. Very different, all connected, very intimate, but also on display.
And in late 2025, while staring out of her studio, a thought struck Maitri: why not create a pot with clotheslines on it? As the collection took shape, she could see converging threads from various parts of her life coming together in the Algani collection, tying back to her identity, to her sense of rootedness, to nostalgic memories.
Specific Pieces: The Algani (अलगनी) collection
The Terrace Stories mug is interesting because it might live in two worlds. Or in one. But both worlds are infinitely fascinating.
For example, are we looking at silhouettes of articles of clothing hung out to dry in the dark on a terrace, vague shapes full of promise and mystery, like the night herself? We learn so much about their owners from clothes, but what when the clothes are veiled and we can only see their outlines? Does the familiar (clothes on clotheslines) become the mysterious (silhouettes of clothes taking on infinite possibilities)?
Or maybe they’re just all articles made of blue-black denim, and there are no silhouettes at all. Looking at this piece is an invitation to let a little fanciful vignette play out in your head.
Maitri’s Journey
Maitri’s journey to becoming a full time artist wasn’t very linear. She has an MBA and worked in PR for many years. It was in the middle of one of these stints (in Mumbai), that she rented an apartment whose walls had tons of paintings hanging on them. She was inspired by these to create her own bottle paintings, eventually starting a social media page on which she posted her paintings on stones collected throughout her travels, especially in the remote parts of Meghalaya.
She enjoyed making art, but never really paid attention to it, it was just something she did.
And then COVID happened. Stuck at home, with nothing much to do in the weekends, she started spending more time painting, and found that it was an outlet for her to express things that spoke to her soul.
When Maitri moved to Bangalore, still during the pandemic, she started watching pottery reels on Instagram. She was drawn to the art form without even knowing why, and a dream took root in her mind, that she would one day have a pottery studio of her own.
And then, in perhaps the first and only instance of the algorithm being useful, she was shown a targeted ad for a pottery workshop that was active during the weekends.
And those two days of throwing clay and creating things of beauty quickly became the focus of her weekdays; Maitri began to look forward to her quiet, almost therapeutic, space at the end of each week.
My time, just for myself. It helped me slow down from all the noise around me.
And the initial difficulty didn’t deter Maitri. Centering is the most difficult part for a beginner, and there were several wobbly – both literally and figuratively – weeks. But once she got the hang of things, she was obsessed, and would spend all her free time either thinking about pottery or creating it.
She signed up for a Level 2 workshop, also on 2021, and got good at complex wheel throwing with higher weights, and started getting comfortable with different shapes. And she spent her downtime during weekends in the studio, always coming back to pottery throughout 2022 and early 2023 even when her day job in PR sometimes enforced breaks from her passion when it got a little too busy.
By 2023, Maitri was at a level of skill where she could create an entire collection on her own, getting good at glazing and firing. She started thinking of quitting her job and becoming a ceramic artist full time, and visions of the spare room in her Delhi house came to her.
In October 2023, she gave her notice. In December 2023, she found herself staring at the spare room: no proper ceiling, no infrastructure, no clear way to bring a kiln in.
By December 2024, the space was transformed. There were two large windows that let in soft natural light, bathing Maitri’s to-be studio in red-gold radiance.
But there was still one more problem. The electric kiln Maitri had in mind required 8 kW of power. The sanctioned load for her residence was 2 kW.
And it was to take almost nine months of red tape navigation, trips to the Electricity Board office, endless waiting accompanied by cups of weak tea, and uncertainty. And in September 2025, her perseverance bore fruit, and Maitri had made her dream – of her very own studio – come true.
Authentic Quirkiness: The Vase with Braided Handles
The Vase with Braided Handles reminds you just how much personality Maitri imbues each of her pieces with. You cannot look at any of her ceramic creations and not love it; she elevates objects to personhood.
Because this Vase might be a person with hands squarely on hips, ruffled sleeves billowing as she stands her ground and goes: thus far and no further, thank you very much. The pinkness of it, when seen in this light, feels like the indomitable spirit of every woman.
Or it could be softer: ornamental braids framing an oval face, crowned with a flower.
The Vase with Braided Handles is also a mirror: you see in her the person you want her to be, filtered through the lenses of your lived experiences.
Imagine treating yourself to a slow weekend (in the hills, or by the beach, whichever you prefer). Only you’re on Venus, where weekends last 15 months (and the atmosphere is clear and cool and breathable, not Venusian thick flammable soup).
And your cottage is exquisitely furnished, soothing you with its old-ness and solid-ness and rooted-ness. And someone who knows you well has slipped little reminders into every nook and cranny of things you love from your past, nostalgic portals to comforting times and places. These images and notes and videos aren’t always related to your past: some are just wholesome renditions of simple living and universal happy-making experiences. All of them leave you with a warm glow, nourish your soul, help you slow down and connect with those parts of yourself that are core to your being, rather than your exterior shell that was built through decades of dealing with an uncaring world rushing by at a hundred miles an hour.
Looking at a Studio Maitri piece feels exactly like that, because all of that exquisite inner nourishment that comes from slowing down and celebrating half-remembered memories of an uncluttered past is poured into the piece, through process and intention.
The Midnight Couture Collection
The Midnight Couture collection straddles worlds again: the whispered half-secrets of late-night trysts using the same rooted medium as everything in the Algani collection. Every delicate illustration of lingerie on clay in this collection feels whispy, ephemeral, and sexy. And that contrasts in a fascinating way with the solidness of the medium.
And the contrast doesn’t end there. The traditionally hidden world of the boudoir, of the bedroom, stands in stark relief to the way in which clotheslines bare everything to the world. Perhaps they are one of the last remaining bastions in which we can be truly honest about our lives.
And yet the small-batch handmade nature of it all just fits, in the best way. Every piece feels special, like something that exists just once and never again on this plane of existence.
The process of creating the pieces in the limited edition Midnight Couture series was elaborate. Black stoneware clay was used as the medium, and Maitri painted her delicate renditions of lacy items of innerwear by hand. After carving the shapes, it was time for the firing. The 1200 degree heat of her kiln imparted dark magnificence to the pieces, and the glazing stage created a series that was as complete as it was audacious and imaginative in concept.
And the collection is fascinating for many other reasons as well, not least for the understated social commentary. India is notoriously private about the S word: things that happen in the bedroom stay in the bedroom. But even lacy lingerie must be washed carefully and dried, even though some people prefer to let their slips cool under the light of the all-seeing moon.
Authentic Whimsy || Thematic Analysis
As you look deeper at Maitri’s work, some common themes emerge. There is the soothing softness that comes with slow and intentional creation. There is elegance and quality: every piece feels like a labor of love, like something bespoke that will only ever exist once on this earth. And there is quirkiness, but it’s never in-your-face, it never feels like someone holding a sign saying “look at me, I’m so quirky”. Rather, every Studio Maitri piece is imbued with a bit of her soul, and that’s why each is authentic. The Algani collection works not because someone crunched the numbers and shortlisted the Top 5 Most Relatable Images For 00s Kids, but because that imagery took root and flowered and bore fruit in Maitri’s brain long before she was ready to share it with the world.
And goblets are traditionally staid and cylindrical. And they’re usually dull bronze or dull gold or dull silver (there’s a recurring theme there). But this ceramic goblet has glorious curves and a hot bubblegum pink sheen. And yet, neither of those things seems like a decision made for the sake of quirkiness, but rather like a fulfillment of what the goblet was always meant to be.
These ceramic fridge magnets are quirky, but only when you actually spell out what they are. After all, if you stick a single sock that looks like it’s made of the finest, most tactile, yarn, on to your fridge, only the sock literally has feet of clay, and also it’s both baby pink and baby blue, you might be forgiven for thinking you’re in a dream. But when you look at the actual ceramic fridge magnets that Maitri creates, they seem so natural that you won’t even notice how much personality they add to something as functional and blocky and (literally + figuratively) cold as a refrigerator.
And just the overall concept of putting slices of Indian nostalgia on items that are used multiple times each day is whimsical. But it’s also magical, casually creating portals from the rose-tinted past to the mundane present, reminding us of other times and places while we sip chai or switch on a lamp.
Quality is an important part of the Studio Maitri experience. Every rendition of a garment or a place feels both natural and customized, like a glimpse of something you’ll never see again. Every collection is set apart from the others; the poster for the Midnight Couture collection is an outstanding example of this, with its black and white aesthetic that whispers of quiet moments under the moon. Even the fonts chosen are elegant, they make you want to take screenshots and load those screenshots into your font finder app of choice.
The focus on quality is another expression of Maitri’s personality. Even after she became comfortable with every aspect of creating her art, she waited until she was completely confident that she was creating something truly exceptional before sharing it with the world. What you see in the Algani collection is a result of trial and error, countless hours of practice and frustration and – ultimately – triumph.
Workshops and Future Plans
A few months after she started her pottery career in earnest, Maitri had her first pop-up shop, and was blown away by the positive feedback and love her pieces received.
She also started teaching pottery in her own studio, completing the circle from her own days half a decade earlier as a student of ceramic art.
Maitri is deeply grateful to her parents for their support and encouragement. She acknowledges their help during every part of the process – from brainstorming to the studio to promotion – and is excited to see where Studio Maitri will go in the future!
Links
Studio Maitri – Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/studiomaitri_/.
Studio Maitri – Shop: https://studiomaitri.dm2buy.com/.