“I found this a remarkably moving work of scholarship, in many ways it is a little masterpiece. Even the method is able to be captured in a poetic manner: ‘It was where I acquired the conviction that contexts determined the kinds of methods that would be used. Method, therefore, was an arbitrary artefact’.”

“This is a really exquisite work of scholarship which is both a design history and design theory of material objects and the designed world.”

“Very effective use of the notes to perform some of the scholarly work : I ‘code switched’ between two linguistic and discourse contexts.‘The act of writing has images. It also has voices that I review and speak about. I owe the text to all those that let me, an outsider, into their worlds’.”

“… exemplary limpid prose: ‘This desire to make an oral account shaped the way language has been used in this book’.”

“The work becomes a ficto-critical account and is a literary as well as a design studies work. Design research does not often pay attention to the beauty of its prose like this. The writing is balanced and always easy to read and understand. Look at the sophistication of this prose: ‘The doxa within the orthodoxy is revealed to be rich, and the spiritual universe gradually emerges, in the hands of social scientists treating their subject matter affectionately, as a complex tapestry of components within a robust system of meaning construction’.”

“This is both scholarly and elegiac. Quite remarkable. So richly researched and observed yet not over labored in the writing. Parts reminded me of the ‘living cultural traditions’ approach which has been prominent amongst Indian Intellectuals working on the crafts in the post war period after the 1980s yet the design approach added so much more.”