The moment you cross the threshold of this Manhattan pied-à-terre, India greets you—not through tourist trinkets or overt symbols but in the elegant curve of a mirror shaped like the subcontinent’s coastline. Its glass evokes water, its walnut frame, land. The result is a quiet meditation on geography that speaks directly to the homeowner.
Ishka Designs, the ELLE Decor A-List firm led by Brooklyn-based designers Anishka Clarke and Niya Bascom, doesn’t chase trends. Their process starts with listening. "We take your words,” Bascom says, “and we turn them into a tangible thing."
For a finance professional of Indian heritage seeking a Manhattan retreat, that meant delving into his cultural DNA. Clarke and Bascom explored architecture, topography—even the contours of coastlines—then wove those references into the fabric of a modern glass tower. The goal, as Clarke puts it, was to create “something that should feel not of this place, but in this place at the same time.”
They’ve found that practicality can slip quietly into poetry. In the main living area, necessity sparked invention: The client needed CNBC on in the background, but the all-glass walls offered nowhere to hang a screen. Their solution: a five-inch-deep oak cabinet conceals a television behind sinuous lines abstracted from India’s coastline. Closed, it reads as a sculpture; open, it functions as a discreet media center. Underfoot, a custom wool rug drifts between loop and cut pile—an aerial map rendered in texture rather than ink. “We brought outside in and inside out,” Clarke says, noting how the rug’s asymmetry echoes the skyline just beyond the glass. “The views were beautiful and that was something that we wanted to honor and respect.”