R Reshmi Munshi and Biniya Arul Jothi
Systemic design has largely developed through Western academic and institutional frameworks, yet complex, adaptive design systems have existed for centuries in non-institutional forms. This paper examines Lambani jewellery and embroidery craft in Bijapur, Karnataka, as a case of indigenous systemic design—one that integrates material knowledge, ecological sensibility, community organisation, economic exchange, and cultural identity into a coherent, self-sustaining whole. Drawing on field research including artisan interviews, direct observation of making processes, documentation of artefacts, and market network analysis, this paper argues that Lambani craft constitutes a pluralistic design epistemology: knowledge held in the body, transmitted through practice and song, encoded in mirror-work, coin-jewellery, and thread—not in text or abstraction. The visual exuberance of Lambani work is not decorative excess; it is a systemic language. Rather than positioning this tradition as endangered heritage requiring rescue, the paper advances a reversal: Lambani craft offers systemic design theory a model of resilient, community-centred, aesthetically plural practice that dominant design discourse has yet to recognise fully. The paper contributes to RSD15’s theme of Systemic Design Pluralism by foregrounding an epistemology from the margins—one in which the maker, the material, the community, and the cosmos are never separated.
Keywords: Systemic Design, Craft Epistemology, Pluralism, Embodied Knowledge, Living Heritage