Cycle of Life by Jivya Soma Mashe
Warli on the Wrist: The Art That Inspired Our First Watch
At Kalā Watch Co., our first watch is not just about timekeeping, it’s also about storytelling and the story we wanted to tell starts with one of India’s oldest and most soulful art forms: Warli art.
The Roots of Warli
Warli art is one of India’s oldest surviving art traditions, with roots traced back to around 2500 BCE. Practiced by the Warli tribe in the Sahyadri ranges of Maharashtra and Gujarat, it is more than just decoration, it is a visual language of life, belief, and community.
Traditionally, Warli paintings were drawn on the walls of clay huts, using a mixture of ground rice paste and water to create striking white figures against earthy red ochre backgrounds. Using geometric shapes like circles, triangles, and lines, the artists captured everything: from farming and festivals to marriages, hunting scenes, and rituals honoring nature.
Even today, Warli art remains a living tradition, not frozen in the past but constantly evolving while staying true to its symbolic roots. For us, it felt like the perfect starting point for a watch: an object designed to measure time inspired by an art form that has celebrated time and life for millennia.
Artwork by Mr. Madhukar Janu Karpade
Translating Warli Into a Watch Dial
Designing this watch was a bit like learning a new language. We wanted the dial to feel authentically Warli, but also to function as a clean, legible timepiece. So here’s how we did it:
Hour Markers: Inspired by Jivya Soma Mashe’s “Circle of Life”, our hour markers aren’t your usual numbers. Instead, they’re spiral loops, a subtle nod to the cyclical nature of time as believed by the Wali’s.
Minute Markers: Remember those stick figures you see in Warli? We broke them down into their most basic forms, a triangle and a circle and turned them into minute markers while still retaining a classic watch design while incorporating the hand-drawn feel.
Dial Texture: For this, we took direct inspiration from the art of Mr. Madhukar Janu Karpade, the Warli artist we collaborated with. His signature style is filling shapes with consecutive fine lines, so we created a custom radial texture for the dial, echoing his unique line work.
Warli Folks at 10 o’clock: To make sure no one misses the Warli reference, we placed a couple of illustrated Warli folks near the 10 o’clock position, balancing out the Kalā logo at 2 o’clock.
Beyond the Watch: Real Hand-Drawn Warli Merch
We didn’t want to stop at just “inspired by.” Warli art deserves the spotlight in its original, hand-drawn form. So, we worked directly with Mr. Madhukar Janu Karpade to create authentic Warli art merchandise.
Every T-shirt and baseball cap in this drop features real hand-drawn Warli artwork by Mr. Madhukar himself. Yes, that means every single piece is unique, no two are exactly alike.
Our View
This watch is more than our first release, it’s a way to pay respect to an art form that has carried stories for thousands of years. We wanted to bridge heritage and horology in a way that feels genuine, not just decorative.
So the next time someone asks you what time it is, you won’t just be telling them the hour, you’ll be telling them a story.
