AKMD
Founded in 2011, AKMD developed out of a thirteen-year friendship and informal design collaboration between Ayush Kasliwal and Mike Dreeben.
The two met in Jaipur, India in 1998: Dreeben had recently completed an MFA in sculpture at the University of Chicago and was working on a Fulbright grant to study traditional craft; Kasliwal had just completed study at the prestigious National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad, with a degree in furniture design. What they found was a mutual interest in fine traditional craft practices and how these could inform contemporary design. This has become a driving concept behind the AKMD collection.