Every design in this shop is original Rasika Designs artwork. Nothing here is licensed stock, a clipart Krishna or a generated image. Each piece begins as a drawing or a painting, and the shop exists so that the work can be worn, carried and hung rather than only looked at on a screen.
The work
The designs fall into a few clear groups, and anyone who has spent time on the site will already recognise them.
The largest is Vrindavan. Krishna as the cowherd boy — walking home behind the herd, a calf in his arms, his flute at his mouth — is the subject the catalogue returns to more often than any other, and it remains the most loved artwork in the shop. Around it sit the child pastimes: Gopal with the butter pot, Yashoda with the rope, Krishna feeding yoghurt to the monkeys.
Then the lilas that call for scale rather than sweetness. Krishna dancing on the hoods of Kaliya. Govardhan Hill on the little finger of a seven-year-old. Narasimhadev coming out of the pillar — a subject that appears many times over, in painting, in fine black-and-white line, and as a comic strip that devotee children read long before they can read the Bhagavatam.
The holy name is its own body of work. The maha-mantra hand-lettered a dozen different ways, drawn rather than set in a typeface: written inside the Om symbol, written inside the shape of Vaishnava tilak, and — the series that surprises people — in graffiti letterforms, pop-art blocks and subway tiles. That last group takes the holy name exactly where Srila Prabhupada took it in 1966, and it sits as easily on someone who simply likes the lettering as on a devotee.
There is a lighter register too, and it is not an afterthought. Bhakta Man. The Kali-yuga joke. Surabhi the cosmic cow floating among galaxies. Lord Vishnu at a DJ set with the universes spinning on the decks, which is a joke and a piece of theology at the same time. Devotees tend to find these first and then discover the serious work behind them.
And there is Vrindavan itself, photographed rather than drawn: temple gates, old walls, sadhus with their books, ghee lamps at arati, the Yamuna in the early morning, brijabasi residents who have lived in Braj all their lives. This part of the catalogue is closer to reportage than to devotional illustration, and it is the better for it.
Why it is printed to order
Almost everything in the shop is made after you order it. Nothing sits in a warehouse waiting to be sold, there is no dead stock to discount, and the print stays crisp because it was made this week rather than two years ago. The exception is the japa bags, which are sewn in small batches and shipped from our own stock.
The family behind it
Rasika Designs is run by a family that practises bhakti yoga, and the shop came out of that rather than the other way round. The aim is simple enough to put in one sentence: Krishna is the most beautiful, anything related to Krishna is also beautiful, and the point of this work is to spiritualise ordinary daily things — what you wear, what you drink your morning tea from, what hangs above the altar, what your beads live in.
Where to start
If you are looking through the shop for the first time, the collections are the easiest way in: every design grouped by pastime and by form of the Lord, with all the products carrying that artwork in one place. Krishna with the cows, the maha-mantra and Lord Jagannath are the three most people begin with.