New Yorker, online accessories shop owner and curator Amitha Raman’s collection is inspired by the golden age of smoking. It blends her love of vintage decor, fine art and pieces that really rip made from high-quality, sculptural, natural materials.
What led you to this intersection of art, Cannabis and product design?
I started smoking weed when I was 14 or 15, out of a pipe from some headshop downtown that someone’s older sister had picked up.
I have a distinctive memory of my first time getting high. I remember being so giggly, having the best time and just knowing: “this is for me.” I grew up in a strict household with immigrant parents from India and Korea, and I would get the Asian glow when I would drink. I loved that instead, I could just smoke and then cover it up with some perfume, and they couldn’t tell.
It was this amazing social bridge. I was pretty preppy, the captain of the soccer team, a cheerleader, and that group was beer drinkers. So I would look for smokers and wound up meeting friends in orchestra class. We went to First Fridays gallery nights, pretending we were sophisticated city dwellers drinking free wine. When I went to Emerson College with a lot of creatives and access to higher-quality weed, it became more of a daily thing.
My background is in marketing and strategy — identifying unmet needs and developing solutions, and that practice is something I draw upon in my day job now.
How did Amitha come to be?
Initially, my idea was like Net-a-Porter: buy other people’s stuff and sell it online, but products would look great online and were actually really cheaply made. I wanted to create products that would blend with my decor, with fine materials like Carrera and Nero Marquina marble.
I remember thinking when I bought my first Roor bong, “I don’t know if I can spend that on a pipe.” But I’ve always been moved by people who do things well, and why the price is what it is. It’s not that thin glass, it’s really well made and rips really well.
I have all of these vintage Murano glass bowls or other vessels I was using as ashtrays. I have a beautiful vintage smoking box my grandfather used: dark wood with mother of pearl inlay, a brass built-in ashtray with zodiac symbols around it, space for a lighter and space for tobacco. I wanted to design things like that for smoking Cannabis.
Why glass?
I’m just a glass girl. A lot of design-forward pieces I found were ceramic, and I like to see the smoke. I really loved Sibelle’s aesthetic, how feminine her pieces are in a male-dominated space.
I cold emailed her. She came up with several sketches. I wanted them to be sculptural but also perform well and hit really hard without looking phallic. The Lady Pipe and Rrose Pipe are both handmade by Sibelle, and I created a more accessible price point with the Magritte Pipe.
Amitha serves as an elegant counterpoint to Cannabis consumption stigma. Is that intentional?
I’ve felt the stigma from my parents, my friends, the art world. I worry about it with my daughter in school. I just want to be me and be open about it. I work out six days a week. It’s not a personal mission to break those stereotypes; it is me.
People who get more agitated about me not fitting are sometimes people in the Cannabis space. In the beginning, it was so hard not to respond to 16-year-olds trying to bully me. I’ve been smoking weed longer than you’ve been alive. I’m a grown ass woman — I used to smoke ditch weed out of a two-liter bottle gravity bong in a bathtub, but now I want to smoke out of what I want to. I’m doing me.
What do you have coming up that people should know about?
I really love the new wooden tabletop lighter — looks beautiful, looks expensive. I’m creating new products at more accessible price points. I worked with this mother-daughter workshop in India.
I’m really excited to partner with Gotham for an exhibition in May benefiting The Here and There Collective, a nonprofit that uplifts Asian artists and curators. It feels very aligned.
I started this before New York went legal, and rec has changed my consumption. I used to roll all of my own joints, so I designed rolling trays, but now we have prerolls. As the market changes and my needs change, my designs will too.
