The Atelier
Made between London & Lucknow
A small house of Chikankari, built on proximity and named hands - where heritage is not a story we tell, but a place we are from.
The Atelier
A small house of Chikankari, built on proximity and named hands - where heritage is not a story we tell, but a place we are from.
The Founder · Rajvee Arora
Aangan began with yellowing chikan-embroidered handkerchiefs my paternal grandmother carried from Amritsar during the 1947 partition. The family later put down roots in Lucknow - the craft’s home city - where I was born in 1997, before being raised in London from the age of six.
Those handkerchiefs were my first encounter with a craft my family had grown up surrounded by, but, in the diaspora, no longer practised. Aangan is my way of carrying it forward - not as nostalgia, but as a living, wearable thing.
- Rajvee
Our promise
“Proximity is not advantage. It is responsibility.”
Every piece is attributed to the karigar who embroidered it. No anonymous hands.
We document and publish what we pay. Fairness you can read, not just trust.
Twelve to forty-eight of each piece. Then we begin again.
Gola Ganj, Old Lucknow
Eleven women karigars work in our atelier under lead artisan Rukhsar Begum. Here are a few of them.
The Garden of Stitches