The married designers Nipa Doshi and Jonathan Levien have worked together since 2000, creating furniture, product and textile designs enriched by her Indian heritage and his training as a cabinetmaker in Scotland. The prodigious output of their London-based studio, Doshi Levien, has included modular sofas for Hay, outdoor seating for B&B Italia and upholstery fabrics for Kvadrat.
The couple is so well known as a team that they were surprised when Ms. Doshi, 53, was asked if she would be interested in designing something on her own.
Curators at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia, invited her to create a custom piece for the museum’s permanent collection, placing no restrictions on what type of work it would be. The commission is funded by the Australian beauty brand MECCA through its initiative for social change. The piece is part of a series that seeks to elevate the work of living female designers and help redress an imbalance in the museum’s collection, in which works by men vastly outnumber those by women.
“I’m often overlooked as a woman designer because I work in a partnership,” Ms. Doshi said in a video interview.
Her response to the commission, to be unveiled on Sept. 25, is a combination dressing table and shrine that she calls “A Room of My Own.” It is a deeply personal piece but far from a solo affair.
Born in Mumbai, India, the designer took inspiration from two of the country’s forms: the cupboards that women use to store their saris and jewelry, and the colorful portable shrines known as Kavads, which unfold to reveal pictures depicting stories about gods, saints and local heroes.
On the front of Ms. Doshi’s lacquered-wood piece, concertina doors, neatly trimmed in bands of custom colors inspired by the Technicolor Indian films of the 1970s, open to reveal a mirror and storage space for whatever a woman may use for self-care rituals. The shrine is at the back, where another set of doors opens onto abstract drawings with which Ms. Doshi pays homage to women who have been influential in her life.
One drawing evokes the Bollywood actress Zeenat Aman, another depicts a compassionate nurse who cared for her during a recent illness. And then there are the “loud ladies” of her childhood in Mumbai and New Delhi; these female relatives and her mother’s friends would take an afternoon break from their daily chores to sit in a circle for tea and gossip — at high volume.
“The kids were always on the periphery,” Ms. Doshi recalled. “But even then, I felt that power of all these women together.”
Ms. Doshi applied layer upon layer of Japanese watercolors to her drawings so that the paint ended up resembling ceramic glaze. She also toyed with the letters spelling out the name of her piece. Before long, she had conceived an entire typeface, which the museum is also acquiring for its collection.
“I’m not calling myself a font designer,” Ms. Doshi said. “But I’ve always believed I can design anything.”
With a little help from Mr. Levien, to be sure.
He was on hand to make suggestions and was crucial to the detailing and functional aspects of the piece, Ms. Doshi said. It was made by a master craftsman and a lacquerer near Paris.
Although created specifically for the National Gallery of Victoria, “A Room of My Own” could serve as a prototype for a limited-edition furniture line, Ms. Doshi said. But even if that never happens, she said the commission gave her the rare freedom to design something without concern for the demands of the marketplace or the constraints of production. And while she has always drawn as part of the design process, this is the first time her drawings were integral to the final piece and seen as artworks in and of themselves.
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