Case Study: Khasi Alphabet Blocks — Crafting Learning Through Local Material & Making
- Samanda Pyngrope
- 4 days ago
- 5 min read
Karaki Design Lab — Design Innovation Case Study
A Karaki project will usually start out with a guided belief: meaningful design rarely begins with a product — but instead with observation.
Observation 1: A Workshop in Nongthymmai
This project began not in a classroom and not in a design studio — but in a working carpentry shop.
At F. Lyngdoh & Brothers, a long-standing furniture workshop on the main road in Nongthymmai, Shillong, we met Bah Merverick Nongkhlaw, grandson of the founder and the craftsperson continuing the legacy. The workshop sits beside the well-known Dukan Pandit; customers regularly step in — sometimes for orders, sometimes simply to talk. The shop is as much a social space as a place of making.
While collaborating on previous projects, we repeatedly noticed a recurring scene on the ground and upper floors: piles of leftover hardwood offcuts.
These pieces were too small to become furniture — but too valuable to discard.
To us, they did not look like scrap, but rather, material waiting to be shaped.
Observation 2: A Gap In The Market
In our local Shillong, especially across stationery shops and gift stores, we noticed something small but significant. Nearly every early-learning toy available to children was imported, commonly plastic and culturally anonymous. A layer of generic representation often dawned several places, but disconnected from a child’s lived environment. That posed a question:
Do these objects merely assist recognition?
Or does a child recognise or feel these as contextually understood connections?
We began asking a one primary question:
What would a learning object look like if it emerged from a child’s own environment?
The Design Question
Karaki’s approach to innovation often follows a framework:
Material + Existing Skills + Local User & Context = New Product Possibility
We asked:
What learning tools do Khasi children grow up with?
Why do most educational toys not reflect local culture?
Could learning begin more familiar imagery?
Can waste material become educational infrastructure?
The answer led us to one of the oldest educational forms across cultures — blocks.
We proposed a small experiment to Bah Merverick:
“Can you make 30 square blocks from these pieces of wood?"
He agreed and the first trial began.
This is where the idea of Khasi Blocks and ABKD was born.
Why Blocks?
Blocks are one of the earliest cognitive learning tools because they teach:
sequencing
hand-eye coordination
language association
storytelling
spatial reasoning
But more importantly, they are open-ended. A block is not a toy with a single function; it is a thinking object.
Khasi Blocks reinterpreted this universal form into a locally rooted learning system. Instead of only English alphabets and unfamiliar imagery, the blocks introduced Khasi words and locally recognizable references:
Khasi words
familiar objects
cultural references
A child learning from their own environment learns faster — and remembers longer.
The block became our basic module — not yet a toy, but a learning interface.
Ideation & Language as System: Research and Responsible Adaptation
Designing the Khasi Alphabet Blocks required moving beyond craft into curriculum study.
Before finalising any alphabet pairing, we referenced three standard prescribed Khasi textbooks used in early learning environments. These helped establish:
accepted alphabet order
commonly taught word associations
recognisable visual references
The blocks were intended to complement education, not disrupt it. However, we did not simply replicate the textbooks.
In many cases, for the 23 letters that were to be included, the examples leaned toward borrowed or industrial references. A common pairing is “E for Enjin.” While understandable, it is conceptually distant from a young child’s daily experience.
Where a stronger contextual alternative existed, we adapted.
We introduced “E for Er-iong” (storm) — a phenomenon deeply familiar in Meghalaya. Children hear it, see it, feel it and grow up with stories around it. The alphabet thus shifted from mechanical reference to environmental literacy.
Not every letter allowed this flexibility.
The Khasi language uses a Roman script system historically adapted for documentation and teaching. Certain phonetic sounds do not map easily onto intuitive visual objects. One example is the letter “G” (eg), often taught as “G-sre” or “X-re” in textbooks — functioning more as a phonetic teaching anchor than an everyday object.
Here, we intentionally retained the textbook convention. This was a design decision.
Innovation is not replacing systems entirely; it is carefully intervening within them.
Where change improved learning, we changed. Where continuity supported literacy, we preserved.
Craft Meets Precision: Hybrid Making in Shillong
The wooden blocks themselves were cut and shaped from reclaimed hardwood. Coreners we gently chamfered to avoid sharp or harsh edges for gentle young learners.
But another challenge emerged: typography.
Early literacy requires clear and consistent letterforms. Hand-carved alphabets, while beautiful, would introduce small variations that could confuse early readers, not to mention drive up the cost, affordance to the everyday man and manufacturability at scale.
To solve this, we collaborated with a local laser-cutting establishment in Shillong to produce the engraving.
This created a hybrid production model:
reclaimed hardwood prepared by traditional carpentry
digitally precise letters created through laser cutting
manual finishing and assembly restoring tactility
Both processes remained local. The project connected traditional furniture craft and contemporary digital fabrication within the same ecosystem.
Technology did not replace craft but in this case, it supported learning accuracy.
Sustainability by Design (Not Marketing)
The Indian toy market — particularly in smaller cities — is dominated by plastic.
Plastic toys are inexpensive and uniform, but they:
break easily
cannot be repaired
are rarely recycled
disconnect children from material understanding
But our chosen material here, wood, behaves differently.
Wood carries weight, temperature and texture. It ages rather than degrades. Opting for natural shades of wood and finishes was also a conscious design intent in this project. Most importantly, Khasi Blocks were produced from existing offcuts, meaning no additional timber was harvested for the project.
This transformed furniture waste into educational infrastructure — a circular design intervention rather than a manufactured product.
Craft as Pedagogy
Khasi Blocks do not only teach alphabets.
They teach:
material awareness
durability
touch sensitivity
care and repair
A plastic toy is replaced.
But a wooden object is maintained.
Through interaction, children indirectly learn value — of material, labour and making.
Equally important, the product sustains the local maker. Each set supports small-scale craft practice instead of industrial supply chains. The learning object therefore also becomes an economic object.
Conclusion: From Prototype to Practice
Khasi Blocks demonstrate a principle central to Karaki Design Lab:
Innovation does not always mean new technology. Sometimes innovation means re-seeing what already exists.
The Khasi Alphabet Blocks began as an observation inside a workshop. They evolved into a locally grounded learning tool that bridges craft, curriculum and sustainability.
The project bridges three systems:
Early childhood learning
Local craft livelihoods
Sustainable material us
Today, the Khasi Alphabet Blocks are produced in small batches and are marketed and available through Candour On Canvas, ensuring that production remains local while directly reaching families, educators and institutions.
The project, however, is not intended to remain static.
Future expansions may include:
extended vocabulary sets
classroom learning toolkits
culturally rooted early literacy resources
research collaborations with educators
We at Karaki Design Lab believe that meaningful educational design grows through participation.
We welcome schools, preschools, libraries, community organisations, grant-makers and individuals who wish to support, fund or collaborate on the further development of Khasi Alphabet Blocks.
Support may take the form of institutional adoption, sponsorship of classroom sets, research partnership or assistance in scaling production while preserving local craft livelihoods.
If you would like to support or collaborate on the Khasi Blocks initiative, we invite you to begin a conversation here.
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