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Time of India
13-07-2025
- Business
- Time of India
Vitrum Studio's Legacy in Glass and Giving
In 1957, a writer in The Times of India made a fleeting remark: "In Kemps Corner, something quietly dignified has been attempted in glass and tile… One hopes it does not go unnoticed. " It didn't quite catch fire in its time, but today, that quiet dignity is finally receiving the recognition it deserves. At the Jehangir Nicholson Gallery at CSMVS, the exhibition 'A Glazed History: Badri Narayan and the Vitrum Studio' (on view till August 31) rekindles the memory of that modest yet radical design collective that once operated in the heart of south Bombay. Vitrum was born from displacement. Polish Jewish émigré Simon Lifschutz, a glassmaker who arrived in India during the Second World War, turned to glassmaking not only as livelihood but as expression. With his wife Hanna, he established Vitrum Studio in 1957 as a philanthropic offshoot of their industrial glass factory. Their aim? To marry craftsmanship with artistic vision—and to make art functional, beautiful, and within reach. You Can Also Check: Mumbai AQI | Weather in Mumbai | Bank Holidays in Mumbai | Public Holidays in Mumbai So strong was Simon's sense of belonging that he even took the effort to learn Urdu as a gesture of respect and connection to those around him. As his son, architect Alex Lifschutz, recalls: "He had experienced such a warm welcome in India after two years as an impoverished refugee moving from Poland through Russia, China and Burma. He felt so at home." Artists from Mumbai's modernist circles—Badri Narayan, Vijoo Sadwelkar, and others—were invited to paint on ceramic tiles, create mosaics and design objects like tabletops, lamps and trays. The aesthetic was tactile, vibrant, and quietly radical: neither elite nor mass-produced, it was art that could live in the everyday home. For Badri Narayan (1929–2013), Vitrum was more than a studio. As its first and eventual chief artist, Narayan brought with him an idealism shaped by Ruskin, William Morris, and the Arts and Crafts movement. Drawing inspiration from Diego Rivera and the US Federal Art Project, he advocated for murals and public installations across Indian cities. His most visible contribution remains the glass mosaic mural for Charles Correa's Gandhi Darshan pavilion in Delhi—a surviving testament to what Vitrum aimed for: art woven into architecture and into civic identity. In the 1960s and '70s, Narayan's handcrafted tiles sold for just 10–15, reflecting his belief that art should be accessible, democratic, and embedded in daily life. He envisioned a public art movement—ambitious, perhaps even idealistic, as the exhibition text acknowledges—but one that championed the social application of art. Curated by Puja Vaish, 'A Glazed History' is as much archaeology as it is an art show. It pieces together fragments—tiles from private collections, rare photographs, Films Division clips, architectural commissions—to reconstruct the life and legacy of a studio nearly lost to time. One of the richest sources was collector Haresh Mehta, who preserved dozens of original Vitrum pieces and shared long-forgotten anecdotes and materials. The exhibition places Vitrum within the wider context of post-independence cultural nation-building. Supported by the Central Cottage Industries under Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay, Vitrum's work stood at the confluence of craft revivalism and modernist aesthetics. For Narayan, this confluence also meant engaging with tradition while forging a contemporary voice—drawing on mythologies, folklore, and literature to create a symbolic vocabulary. Vitrum Studio was also, as Alex Lifschutz recalls, a deeply personal endeavour. "Art was very important to my mother and father," he says. "Both had a hand in the Studio although my father was much more responsible for the factory." Simon, an engineer trained in industrial glass, also saw art as a civic commitment. "He wanted to create value—not just economic, but cultural, social and aesthetic." That ethos extended to their charitable ventures, like teaching child beggars to make delicate glass animals. The studio's design itself embraced passive cooling, recycled materials, and thoughtful provisions for women workers—making Vitrum a forerunner of today's ethical design studios. "There isn't a single 'right time' for overlooked histories to surface," says Vaish. "But this one reminds us that art can be civic, democratic and collaborative." Vitrum's legacy, as Alex sees it, was always about creating value—not just economic, but social, cultural and aesthetic.
Hindustan Times
15-06-2025
- Business
- Hindustan Times
How a WW II Polish couple's Kemps Corner studio introduced Mumbai artists to glass mosaics and painted ceramics
MUMBAI: During World War II (1939 to 1945), a number of Jews fleeing Nazi persecution in Europe found refuge in Bombay, and enriched the city's culture and its arts. Musician Walter Kaufmann influenced Indian musicology, Austrian dancer Hilde Holger (later Boman-Behram) established the School of Art for Modern Movement in Fort and Rudolf von Leyden became a prominent art promoter, especially of the Ganjifa cards. In this mix were Simon Lifschutz and his wife Hanna, a Polish-Jewish refugee couple who established the city's foremost glass and ceramic studio in Kemps Corner. They introduced Mumbai's artists to glass mosaics and painted ceramics, making a significant impact on the art and design scene in Mumbai then. Yet, Lifschutzs and their Studio Vitrum (glass in Latin) have been mostly unknown until now. A new art exhibition, 'A Glazed History: Badri Narayan and the Vitrum Studio', by the Jehangir Nicholson Art Foundation (JNAF), at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (CSMVS), is reintroducing Mumbai to the studio, its artists and their art. It's a culmination of an intensive two-year research and investigation into Studio Vitrum, which took Puja Vaish, the director of JNAF and curator of the show, to archives and art collections across India, to piece together Studio Vitrum's story. 'The exhibition revisits two overlooked chapters in Modern Indian Art—Badri Narayan's legacy and Vitrum Studio's cultural role—as entry points into broader debates on art, design and public space,' says Vaish. Studio Vitrum (1957-74) was a philanthropic project of the Polish couple's glass factory in Vikhroli called Vitrum. It manufactured glass bottles for pharmacy and cosmetic companies, including Ponds and Nivea. The studio specialised in hand-painted ceramic tiles and glass mosaics, and was later renamed Hexamar Studio. It invited artists to paint on ceramic tiles and create Venetian type of glass mosaic tesserae, as affordable art and home decor objects such as coasters, trays, tabletops and lamps, says Vaish. These seldom seen objects and a few paintings make up the 102 works displayed in the exhibition. They are sourced from JNAF's collection and from private collectors such as Dadiba Pundole, Pheroza Godrej and Haresh Mehta. Most of these were made by artist Badri Narayan (1929 – 2013). He was, in many ways, the lead artist of the studio, promoting it and getting other artists to work there as well. Narayan's city scape -- a glass mosaic -- makes for the exhibition's centre piece. Small blue, yellow and red pieces of glass are stuck together to represent a city dotted with big and small, wide and narrow buildings, all fused together, without any breathing room between the structures. 'The work shows Mumbai's suburb of Chembur,' says Dadiba Pundole, an art expert who runs the Pundole gallery and Pundole's auction house. Around the 1970s when the work was made, Narayan was living in Chembur, home to thousands of Partition refugees. The work is from Mehta's collection. Dadiba, though, has a few ceramic plates and bowls on which Narayan has etched similar paintings, which are also displayed in the exhibition. Another prominent work in glass mosaic by Narayan is based on the theme of the Last Supper, while his painted ceramic tile work showing a watermelon vendor in the foreground of those fused buildings is placed alongside a painting on the same subject. A wall in the exhibition is dedicated to works of unknown artists – hand-painted, glazed ceramic tiles that depicts a village scene by S.A.M Kazi, another village scene showing women in ghaghra choli by VM Sohoni and a black and white figure of a lady wearing colourful jewellery by Anjali Das. All of these are from 63-year-old businessman Mehta's collection. In the interim, however, many established artists such as KH Ara, KK Hebbar and AA Raiba worked in the studio. 'It used to be a buzzing space,' says Mehta. He has hundred-plus objects in his personal collection created there, including a ceramic plate of FN Souza. Mehta also published a book on the studio titled 'Vitrum' at the opening of the exhibition on June 13. In its foreword, Pheroza Godrej writes that her family's friends, the Capadias, had rented the ground floor of their Ratton Villa to the studio. She saw artists experiment with glazes, paint tiles and fire the kiln. In the foreword, she says, 'It was not just a space for ceramics, it was a gathering place, a place where parties were held, where friendships were made and where the essence of creativity filled the air.' Another interesting discovery is that of glass mosaic murals at prominent buildings in Mumbai. 'Many architects would visit artists to make glass and ceramic murals on building facades,' says Vaish. MF Husain did a few – one for the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, another for LIC building in Nariman Point and one for Hindustan Unilever in Churchgate. Where – JNAF gallery, CSMVS, Kala Ghoda Date – On view until August 31 Timing – 10.15 am to 6 pm Museum entry – ₹200 for adults.
India Today
15-05-2025
- Business
- India Today
Cyber ‘Kavach': Railways plans Rs 600 cr war-room against attacks
India is establishing a state-of-the-art Cyber Security Operations Centre (CSOC) for its railway system at the national transporter's headquarters Rail Bhawan in New Delhi to fend off cyber threats to the Indian Railways' vast and increasingly digitised an outlay of around Rs 600 crore, this will be the first such centralised defence system against digital intrusions for one of the world's largest rail step reflects a growing sense within the government of nationwide vulnerability of critical infrastructure, particularly transportation systems, to cyber attacks. The upcoming facility is seen as a nerve-centre for threat assessment, risk mitigation and ensuring effective cyber security, incident response, knowledge management and information-sharing across the railway network, encompassing the passenger reservation systems, freight operations information systems, operating systems and communication systems.'Almost every aspect of train operations and all ticketing and freight charging systems are computerised. Cyber security is very critical for such a system. The fact that there are many sub-systems within the IT landscape could help in isolating the attacks, although securing each one is a difficult task,' said R. Badri Narayan, consultant to railway's IT arm CRIS (Centre for Railway Information Systems) and a retired Indian Railway Traffic Service Railways has been successfully thwarting attempts to hack the systems, but cyber security is also about the best responses in case multiple systems are breached,' he explained. Mock drills should be a routine feature to ensure the railways can get things under control in the unfortunate event of a successful cyber attack, said Narayan, who has been at the helm of the railway ministry's IT leading tech companies—Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), TCL, Bharti Airtel, Sterlite Technologies and Larsen & Tubro (L&T)—have emerged as successful bidders in the technical qualification round of the tender. Industry sources say the financial bids are likely to be completed within weeks and the purchase order in a month or so.'This is much-needed infrastructure for an organisation that increasingly runs on digital systems—from ticket sales to asset monitoring,' said an industry source in the know of the project plan. 'Once the cyber security centre is up and running, India's ability to envision, contain and neutralise cyber threats in real time will take a major leap.'Indian Railways, over the last decade, has embraced dozens of digital platforms to modernise operations, cut waste in its haystack and improve customer experience. Ashwini Vaishnaw, the Union minister for railways and electronics and IT, has frequently stressed that technology has a key role to play in addressing operational railways has also made an effort to remain in step with the tech curve, which includes deployment of new-age technologies, such as the Kavach anti-train collision system and high-speed the web and mobile portals of IRCTC (Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation), which process over 1 million bookings a day, to real-time GPS tracking of trains and electronic interlocking of train movements, the backbone of the network is no longer only steel and concrete but also software and some risks are inherent. Industry experts say the railways' fragmented, and often, obsolete digital systems are susceptible to ransomware, phishing and foreign-state actors. Beyond financial losses or stolen data, a successful cyber attack could result in disruptions of rail traffic, putting passenger safety and national security at are not vague threat assessments. Last year, a ransomware attack hit CSX, one of the biggest freight railroad operators in the United States, putting its systems offline, disrupting operations and inflicting a major financial blow. Back in 2018, the UK's rail network had intercepted an attempt to break its ticketing system, leading to a national the years, transportation systems globally—be it rail, road, air or sea—have adopted securer communications that are no longer 'nice to have' but a strategic CSOC of the Indian Railways will have real-time, 24x7 cyber-monitoring using a tracking system, Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based threat analytics, cyber threat intelligence and information-sharing practices, intrusion and anomaly detection system, and an incident response system based on inputs fed from various sources. It will operate in coordination with the National Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Centre (NCIIPC) of the National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO) and CERT-In (Indian Computer Emergency Response Team).The CSOC will also be developed as a centre of training and simulation for the railways' cyber workforce, enhancing indigenous capability to respond to zero-day vulnerabilities and persistent across the world are investing heavily in cyber security. Germany's national railway Deutsche Bahn has only one central cyber operations centre in operation. It is connected to the country's national cyber authority. Japan Railways had built an AI firewall framework to protect its train control/command IT systems ahead of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Brazil and Indonesia, considered as emerging economies, are also aligning cyber security of transport infrastructure with international systems such as ISO/IEC move is in line with global best practices, although some experts believe the country is playing catch-up. With around 70,000 km of tracks, thousands of networked devices and a growing customer base, Indian Railways are up against digital threats that traditional firewalls cannot the CSOC takes shape, insiders say the project's success will depend on how swiftly the selected vendor picks up the ropes of the railway system, the level of coordination between government bodies, and how rapidly technology can be deployed. The value of the IT bidders—all giants in their domains—will be tested as to India Today Magazine
