Design Items with Personality and 2000 Copyrighted Ornaments by Saini

Saini Studio uses geometry, rotation technique, and, most importantly, a unique artistic approach to create ornaments of each Georgian letter. By now, the founders have developed around 2000 unique copyrighted ornaments that can only be used with their products.

Saini Studio's CEO and art director, Nino Slepchenko, takes us behind the scenes of their brand and the work that goes into creating these magnificient products.

For those not familiar with Saini, can you share a brief history?

Saini Studio was launched in 2015 by me and my husband Levan Vateishvili. As you see it’s a family business and this is more than just a job for us. Both Levan and I, are artists and designers. I have years of experience working in graphic design and interior design. While experimenting with graphics and drawings I have come up with an idea to create ornaments of the Georgian alphabet. Our alphabet is so beautiful, it inspires you to work with it, to make art-works using these perfectly shaped letters. Our unique ornaments are all based on the Georgian alphabet that has been added to the List of Intangible cultural heritage of UNESCO. Using these unique ornaments, we work on product design, produce exclusive interior and exterior design objects, lightings, decorative mirrors, ceramic items, jewelry and we design high-end porcelain dinnerware, engraved wine glasses, and textile. Saini’s products are mainly handmade. The studio works with sustainable and food-safe materials. “Saini” in Georgian means a plate as the first items designed by the studio were porcelain plates, so after a family council, it was decided to give this name to our company. 

Marble-onyx rotating serving stand and silk scarf with Saini ornaments

Tell us about the technology you use to create unique ornaments. 

From the very beginning, it was clear that our unique ornaments can be used in the design of a great variety of objects and that we can use diverse technologies to be up to date with modern times: ornaments can be applied by decal technology, they can be engraved on glass and other materials, we use energy-efficient bulbs for our lightings and so on. We really cherish technical progress and use all the possibilities that technology gives us to transform our ornaments to different surfaces with laser precision but the final assembling of products is done by hand and this is extremely important for us. 

Photo: Handmade wooden serving tray with 33 ornaments on ceramic tiles represent all 33 letters of the Georgian alphabet. This is an artistic tribute to the culture and history of Georgia.

What was one of the challenges of producing high-quality items?

One of the biggest challenges is to find well-trained craftsmen. And this is essential when you want to keep production on the same high level. For us, it is really important to achieve perfection and to make flawless items. Also, it is quite a challenge in Georgia to find sustainable and high-quality materials. We don’t want to save money on materials, we want our items to serve people for a long time. This can lead to a higher price of a final product but this is the given situation and we try to do our best to keep a price-quality balance. Production of a handmade product, unlike items produced on a large scale, requires quite a time, the process is very diligent and careful. Unfortunately, some customers don’t take this into consideration. Not everyone can value the work that is done behind unique and handmade items. Each handmade item is a result of a designer’s and craftsman’s creativity, skills, diligence, and love both for his work and for a future owner of a beautiful and high-quality item. I think that in this era of technology when most of the work is done by machines, everyday items lack individuality. Mass products don’t have a unique character and “personality” that come from people involved in their production. 

Tell us about your team and run us through your working day.

We have a rather small team: 7 regular employees and a variable number of non-regular employees. I am the art director, I work on ornaments and design new items. With my husband Levan, we mostly work on product design, we create prototypes of different products. We also have a project and communications manager, a junior designer, and a photographer… We all have multitasked work to do.  

 What is the company’s biggest success so far?

One of the biggest news for today is that we have opened our own showroom and studio space. It is situated in a central neighborhood of Tbilisi, at 26, Vasil Barnovi street. We are happy that we can meet our customers in person more often and we can show them our work in a beautiful environment. 

As for the achievements, a great success was when in 2018 Saini Studio became the first prize winner of the Creative Business Cup Georgia and was presented in Copenhagen at the international Creative Business Cup Global Final competition. In 2020 with the Design Georgia association our studio has participated in the Georgian Designers’ Pop-Up Exhibition in Telliskivi Creative City, Tallinn. Also, in 2020 with the help of Design Georgia and the support of The USAID Economic Security Program Saini studio has joined Etsy global platform. Support of different programs, associations, and grants is very important for startups. For creative business, it is crucial to have support on the governmental level as well as from NGOs. 

Do you have any new projects coming up? 

With the initiative and support of Design Georgia, together with several members of this association, we plan to take part in the XVI Tallinn Design Festival, from 20 to 26 September 2021. We hope that pandemic won’t affect this important cultural event. 

We have recently started to work on jewelry and made the first prototypes of a silver ring and a brooch or pendant made of silver, gold, and cold enamel. We are working on this direction as we see great potential in using ornaments for making an exclusive jewelry collection by Saini. 

Our future plans also include working on textile: mostly silk and natural cotton. We also would like to reach a bigger international market and to increase our production. 

Our ornaments and our vision of design have already shown us that sustainability in creative business gives lots of opportunities: as you have seen we have started from porcelain plates and then have step by step developed our production adding more and more design objects, both decorative and functional. We constantly work on new ideas and innovative designs. We hope that diversity and constant development help us to remain interesting for the customers and for art and design professionals.