Mean Girls actor and artist Rajiv Surendra talks about the art of learning a skill and surrounding yourself with craftsmanship. Rajiv chats with host Marianne Canada about how his fascination with pioneers at an early age has evolved into his admiration for craftsmanship as an adult. He talks about the difference between talent and skill, and what being a master of a craft really means. Rajiv talks about the collection of handmade items in his home and how a combination of the Marie Kondo method and patience has forced him to be surrounded by only items that bring him joy and nostalgia. He talks about the importance of living with purpose and intention in a fast-paced, digital world and not waiting to use the precious items that you have. Then, award-winning furniture and interior fabricator Jason Pickens talks about growing up in a furniture-making family, and how it taught him to appreciate process and slow craftsmanship. He talks about the value of bespoke furniture and how to source unique, handmade furniture for yourself.
Mean Girls actor and artist Rajiv Surendra talks about the art of learning a skill and surrounding yourself with craftsmanship. Rajiv chats with host Marianne Canada about how his fascination with pioneers at an early age has evolved into his admiration for craftsmanship as an adult. He talks about the difference between talent and skill, and what being a master of a craft really means. Rajiv talks about the collection of handmade items in his home and how a combination of the Marie Kondo method and patience has forced him to be surrounded by only items that bring him joy and nostalgia. He talks about the importance of living with purpose and intention in a fast-paced, digital world and not waiting to use the precious items that you have. Then, award-winning furniture and interior fabricator Jason Pickens talks about growing up in a furniture-making family, and how it taught him to appreciate process and slow craftsmanship. He talks about the value of bespoke furniture and how to source unique, handmade furniture for yourself.
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Find episode transcript here: https://hgtv-obsessed.simplecast.com/episodes/why-you-should-use-the-good-china-with-rajiv-surendra
[MUSIC PLAYING] SPEAKER: Hello, and welcome to HGTV Obsessed, your podcast for all things HGTV.
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Our episode today is special. It's like a little treasured keepsake. We're talking about the importance of having intentional items in your home and how it can make everyday moments feel special. And first up, we have Rajiv Surendra. You might know him as Kevin G from Mean Girls but you are quickly going to find out that he is so much more.
He is this fascinating curator and collector of antique handmade items and he's joining us to talk about his love of craftsmanship and how the items he interacts with every day remind him to cultivate a purposeful life. Then we have HGTV regular Jason Pickens who's joining me to talk about being a custom furniture designer and why he still chooses to make things by hand in this automated world that we live in.
I'm so excited for you guys to hear my chat with Rajiv. Don't be surprised if he becomes your new favorite person.
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Rajiv, welcome to HGTV Obsessed, we are delighted to have you.
RAJIV SURENDRA: It's nice to be here.
SPEAKER: I have to address the elephant in the room and mention, you're probably most widely recognized for your role as Kevin G and Mean Girls. I never thought this sentence would come out of my mouth but your starring role in Mean Girls is, I think, like, actually, one of the least impressive things about you. You're an artist, you're a calligrapher, a curator, a collector, a potter, I mean, you're probably the most true like Renaissance man that I know. Did I miss anything? I know you have a lot of interests.
RAJIV SURENDRA: Ever since I was a little kid, I was very scatterbrained. Like I had my hands in many different things to the point that my mom would, very often, reprimand me. Like she'd see me doing something, like melting crayons to create multicolored wax sticks for drawing when I was in fourth grade. And she'd come across this kid doing these strange things and would often say, why are you doing that? You should be focusing on school.
Looking back, I have grown to accept that was just in me to be very curious and to try to figure out how to do things that interested me to the point of not mastering any of them really, but just trying things out and seeing what I loved doing and then, very wildly, pursuing all of these different avenues of creating.
At this point in my life, I don't feel confident saying that I do these things. Like oh, yes, I do pottery and I call myself a potter when I'm in that context, but when I witness someone that is actually working at a high level in their field, it is very humbling and I really start to see how I am a novice in many of these things.
And it's an honor to be able to, at least, have the opportunity to try all these different things out. I think to the public eye, it's very easy for people to look at what I do and say, oh, my gosh. You're so talented in so many different things. Listen, I'm showing you the nice stuff. I'm showing you when it works. You're not seeing it when it's a complete failure. And you're not seeing how often it's a failure.
Because in order to become even semi-proficient at something, there are years and years and years of doing it very, very badly. You don't see that through Instagram.
SPEAKER: But I think that's something I really admire about you. Is how candid you are about how hard you work to get better at the things that interests you. I think that a lot of people now more than ever, they have this idea that if they're not instantly good at something, they just give up.
RAJIV SURENDRA: Absolutely. I apprenticed with a potter in Connecticut, his name is Guy Wolff. He makes Martha Stewart's flower pots. People call him a master potter and he always says, no, that is a term that is thrown about all over the place now. And there was a time when there were guilds for these things and to be a master at the trade, you had to pass a certain level where you were actually throwing a certain tonnage, like the weight of the clay that you would throw in a day was in the tons. That qualified you to be at this level or this level.
He really shies away from this word, master. And this is someone that we would look at and say, oh, yeah. We can call you that. So in that vein, I feel the same way about the level of skill that I have in any one of these trades and going back to what you mentioned before. People will say, oh, I tried to calligraphy once or I tried pottery once.
I was with Guy a few weeks ago and this woman came in and she said, the thing I could never figure out was how much water do you use. How do you figure that out? Because I tried pottery and I wasn't good at it. And he was doing his thing. And he said, when you say you tried pottery, how long was that? How long do you mean? How long did you spend trying it out?
She's like, oh, I think it was like a semester, so like three months. And he just kind of nodded. He's like, I've been doing this for over 50 years. And he, behind me, has been doing it for 20 and he's still-- I would not confidently say I'm good at it. So you tried it for three months and you're bad at it, oh, no.
A historical apprenticeship was traditionally, in the Victorian era, seven years. For seven years from the age of 12 to 19, you wouldn't even touch the clay, you'd be cleaning up. You'd be getting his breakfast. You'd be carting around the supplies. You weren't on the wheel. And now, we have this idea that these crafts are like, oh, it's so wonderful to be an artist.
Guy has back pain, he has wrist pain, he's like cringes sometimes when he has to bend over and pick up clay. It is hard work. And today, it's so easy for people to confuse the word skill and talent. Oh, you're so talented. OK, maybe some of it is talent, but it is actual technical skill. You start and you will be very bad at it for years. But if you stick with it, if you find the right teacher, if you really want to learn, have to put in the hours. And if you do that, you will get better.
SPEAKER: Well, Rajiv, I want to talk a little bit about your handmade home tour, which, if you have not seen Rajiv's home tour on HGTV Handmade, we will definitely put it in the show notes at hgtv.com/podcast. You walk us through your New York City apartment, which is filled with these thoughtful items you've collected or made yourself over the years. You've touched on this a little bit but were you drawn to this love for items with history and provenance from an early age or did this start more in your adulthood?
RAJIV SURENDRA: It's always been there. I remember very, very clearly in second grade starting a unit in class about Pioneers and then going on this class trip to a place called Black Creek Pioneer Village which is Canada's equivalent to Williamsburg down here. I remember walking into this log cabin that was built in 1816 and just feeling, this is where I belong.
There was a fire roaring in this huge stone hearth, there were iron caldrons bubbling away over the fire hanging from an iron crane, there were herbs hanging from the ceiling that were drying, there was a spinning wheel in the corner and someone was spinning wool, and there were sheep grazing outside. So the wool that was being spun was from the sheep.
All the furniture was very rustic farm furniture that was painted in very old milk paint. And everything in there was utilitarian. And yet every single thing looked like a piece of art. 15 years later, I'm in high school, we had to pick a place in the city to volunteer. I picked Pioneer Village because I was like, I have to be there. And I ended up working there for 10 years.
Every summer, it never ever, ever lost its magic. Blacksmithing, wood working, baking in the hotel kitchen, baking 25 loaves of bread every morning in a wood fired oven. We had a printing shop where we would set type, set little Ed type and then ink it and print the newspaper. I worked in the mill where we ground our own flour. And I was in heaven.
SPEAKER: So clearly, your love of old world craftsmanship goes way back. And again, you have this beautiful apartment filled with treasures. Where do you tend to find these items? Like, are you constantly scouring the antique shops? Are you just keeping an eye out?
RAJIV SURENDRA: I always have an eye out even when I'm on Instagram. I follow a couple of companies that make beautiful kitchens. So when they post a picture and there's just something in there, I tap on it and if it's a light fixture, I'll fall down a rabbit hole of finding this company that makes light fixtures with a lot of care and attention to detail and then that will start this journey.
When I'm traveling across the states, one of the things I love doing is finding the local antique malls and I love-- if I have to speak at a college because I do that regularly either before or after my talk, I'll find the nearest antique mall. That will be my leisure activity. It always feels like treasure hunting. Like, huh, what's in here?
And then you'll spot something and it'll be like, oh, I found this thing. And look at that, look at this. Is so beautiful, it's in perfect condition. And then it gets purchased and packed in my bag and carefully brought home. You connect to the actual local history when you find this stuff. I collect ironstone like iron stone plates. Iron stone was made in England, but it was made for export. For really like rural people, they could buy this stuff inexpensively and it would last.
And that it would travel without breaking. It wasn't delicate China. I'm shocked sometimes where I find it. Finding it in rural places. I'm like, why is there ironstone here? And I'm like, oh, duh, because it was sent out here for the local farmers to buy.
SPEAKER: Well, and even the utilitarian items in your home, your dish soap dispenser, your hand woven dish towels. Everything just seems to have beauty and significance. Do you find that because of this you're able to find more joy and these everyday tasks? I mean, washing the dishes is not the most glamorous of tasks.
RAJIV SURENDRA: The short answer is, yes. That is my motivator. To quote Mary Poppins, in every job that must be done, there is an element of fun. And if you figure out how to make it fun or nice or beautiful, you have to do it. And if every little bit of the process entails something that's meaningful or beautiful, it genuinely does contribute to these day-to-day mundane tasks being nice.
And as said, it goes back to being in that little log cabin from 1816. There were very long quiet afternoons in the summer when all the visitors to the place had gone home and I'd be spinning wool and I'd hear sheep. And I would just be looking around and it would really sink in, this was someone's actual home. This isn't a setup, this is not an amusement park, people lived in here.
And look at all the things and it really instilled in me that it is possible and it's possible today even in New York City and yet we've come so far away from making things ourselves that we don't even realize the potential that all these utilitarian things have to beautify your space.
I was just telling someone the other day, you know those self-healing mats that you can cut-- like you can-- you need to cut cardboard or like you're doing a paper project, I've had three because I buy one and then I use it and I put it in the closet. And every time I come across it, I'm like, I hate this thing. It's so ugly. Like it's Black with orange printing all over it or it's green with gray printing all over it.
I hate this thing. And then I get so infuriated that I throw it away. And then I'm like, but I need it. But then I'm like, what am I going to do? And I mentioned this in the Home Tour video. I am a complete Marie Kondo convert. And in her book she says, then you don't buy it. You do not bring it into your home and you figure it out in some other way.
So the third time I throw it away, do you know what I started doing? When I need to cut cardboard or cut a piece of paper with a utility knife? I cut it on the hardwood floor and I use the grooves of the hardwood as my line. So I'm not cutting the actual wood. You know what else I don't have? I don't have a stand mixer. I don't have an electric mixer. And I bake cakes and I make cookies, and people have asked, how do you do that?
With a bowl and a wooden spoon just like your great grandmother would have done. I don't like those things. I don't like how much room they take up. I don't like the sound. I know it sounds a little bit too much, but it's true. It makes life better. And if you set a standard for yourself and you refuse to succumb to what you think you have to do, then you figure it out. You learn that it is possible.
And yes, it takes more time but give yourself more time then. OK, it's going to take double the amount of time to make the cookies, so? Then you're alone with your thoughts. And you're quiet, and you're thinking, I'm actually communicating with myself. I'm conversing with myself. That has an advantage to mental health, which, I think, we need in this day and age.
SPEAKER: Yeah. So that's interesting that you bring that up because something I, actually, wanted to ask you about was social media because social media does seem antithetical to your love for calligraphy and letter writing but it also has been a great way for you to connect with people that have common interests or just love to see what you're doing. How do you marry technology with some of your more analog pursuits?
RAJIV SURENDRA: You're, very rigidly, limit the amount of time you spend on it. I was so opposed to it for so long, then I had a mental shift. I started just accepting like, maybe there's a way of taking your love of old things, this nostalgic feeling that has brought so much fulfillment to your life and sharing it with people. Maybe it could have some real positive effects. And that's what actually motivated me to treat social media like work.
SPEAKER: I love your relentless pursuit of learning and sharing. And again, I think the word that keeps coming up for me when I think about you is curiosity. Like you're curious and I think it's really inspiring. You talk a lot about this both in your Ted Talk, which is great, I recommend everybody go and watch it, and your book, Elephants in My Backyard.
What would you tell people who fear the failure or fear the time commitment? It takes to learn a new skill or try something new because we touched on this a little bit. This idea that people want to be good at things really quickly, but how do you encourage people to get past that?
RAJIV SURENDRA: For me, I think working at Pioneer Village really set this off. I was in these buildings that were full of these beautiful things and as a teenager, I really started realizing, where are these people? Oh, they're dead. And who used this bowl? And who spun on the spinning wheel?
The spinning wheel had 1838 carved into it and it was kind of janky. Someone carved that and someone sat at this wheel as I am sitting at this wheel now. It's like the cutlery in my kitchen. 1820, 1810, 1790. It's all marked. Who used this fork? Who put this-- how many people put this very spoon in their mouth? What table did it sit on? In what manner house? In what century?
And there were candles on the table. There were flowers on the table. The tablecloth was handwoven. What were the conversations that all of this cutlery has heard over the years? These people are gone. And I will also be gone. I will one day be gone and this fork will still be here. And where will this fork go? And if you think about that on a daily basis, you will stop wasting your time doing stupid mundane, pointless things and you will accept that you have to change something because you will die.
And do you want to come to the end of your life and look back and say, I wasted my time? We don't have a choice when that will happen. So think about that. Think about the five minutes before you die and think about what will be going through your head. And as a kid, I was doing that. And I thought, to hell with looking back and thinking, I wasted this time and I regret not doing this. No, I'm going to do what I want to do as long as I'm not hurting other people. Think about that and accept it.
It'll start to become very easy to see what's important in your life. The reason why a lot of these wonderful things that I have are in perfect condition is because they were too good for someone. This glass that I have right here is probably 120 years old. It doesn't have a chip in it. Probably, because it was too nice to be used.
Well, I'm going to use it and if it gets chipped, because that's how I look at this. It has come to me and I'm not doing that. I'm not saving anything. I wear my nicest clothes on a regular basis or pull out my suits and wear a suit on an average Wednesday going to the hardware store. Wear it, let it get worn out. It looks better when it's worn out. Three-piece tweed suit with the knees kind of like threadbare, good. Let the suit have holes in it.
And then when it's worn out, toss it. Like, put it in a vintage store and have another one made. Use your stuff.
SPEAKER: That sums it up. Live your life, surround yourself with things that you love and use them. Well, Rajiv, I want to ask, what's next for you? I feel like you always have something new on the horizon. Is there anything new that you're looking forward to diving into?
RAJIV SURENDRA: Yes, I have been working on a show, a TV show, Idea. So fingers crossed, we have made some great headway in the last couple of years and hopefully, very soon, there will be something on the air that is me opening the door to my life and allowing viewers to just follow me around as I do my thing.
SPEAKER: Also, I will tell everyone if you are as fascinated by Rajiv as we are, he has his home tours on HGTV Handmade and some additional videos. You've got one showing your beautiful chalk art which we didn't even touch on as well as some upcoming videos on, I think, you're doing bookbinding and marbling.
RAJIV SURENDRA: We did a marbling, paper marbling video and a bookbinding video, and I used the marbled paper in the book binding.
SPEAKER: Everybody can check out HGTV Handmade in the coming weeks to see those. So tell everyone where they can follow along with your pursuits on social media when you choose to participate with social media.
RAJIV SURENDRA: You can follow my account. My personal account is @rajivsurendra on Instagram and then I have a separate account for my calligraphy stuff which is @lettersinink. L-E-T-T-E-R-S-I-N-I-N-K. To anybody that's listening that is following me, thank you. Thank you for all the kind words of support.
SPEAKER: Thank you for being such a just inspiring, delightful person.
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Wow. I am just going to you-- let that sink in. I cannot stress the importance of watching Rajiv's Home Tour on HGTV Handmade. I want you guys to watch it if nothing else to see his antique bed because he had to have a mattress custom made for it. It's really something. Next up, we have my good friend and fellow lover of handmade items, Jason Pickens. Please enjoy our chat.
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Jason, hi, buddy. How are you doing?
JASON PICKENS: Very well, thank you. Very well.
SPEAKER: For everyone listening, Jason was born into really a furniture-making family but along the way, you've become an incredible artist yourself. You've created custom interiors, you've worked on HGTV shows like Home Town Takeover and A Very Brady Renovation. You've been featured in Architectural Digest. I mean, I could like brag and brag and brag. I'm not even going to talk about your other lives as like Martha Stewart's right hand man or making props for TV shows and movies.
But what I want to know, Jason, is, how did growing up in a family that owned a furniture factory-- how did that shape your perspective on craftsmanship?
JASON PICKENS: More than what my family was doing was probably-- where we were living probably had a larger impact on my profession now because in the late '80s, early 1990s in Alabama was very rural, the internet still didn't exist for us, cell phones didn't exist. And so you're really isolated. And in that isolation, you have to be really self-sufficient.
So we did own a very, very small furniture manufacturing facility at the time. I think, maybe, when I was a kid, my dad might have had five or six employees. You have to do everything yourself. So I went around with my dad and my granddad everywhere. And if something-- a metal part was broken, you had to welded and fix it. If a belt was broken, you had to learn to mend it, learn how to put bearings in and take bearings out, oiling gears, taking car parts apart, doing woodwork.
So I think, just getting a sense of how parts go together, the engineering of how things work, and then also my parents were big on self-expression. Learning to use the tools, use the process, and put your own stamp on it. So we would spend all day working on a piece of machinery that might be broken or hosing and cleaning belt sanders was a huge job of mine when I was a kid.
And then it would be working until 2:00 or 3:00 and then my dad would need to do office work, and he would just set me up in the shop to just create and make whatever I wanted to with the tools that we had repaired, which sounds pretty dangerous now that I think about it. But also, really fun and I think just having, from an early age, a concept of process and what worked.
And so I think really our isolation really helped because you just couldn't-- there was no YouTube for you to Google how something will get done. You just have to figure it out with very minimal parts unless you wanted to drive 2 and 1/2 hours, probably, to go get something.
SPEAKER: So if someone finds themselves really wanting to invest in handmade furniture, what should they focus on? What should they look for?
JASON PICKENS: There's two schools. Nowadays, when something is handmade, it certainly does have a price tag. But that's only because there are so few people left who can actually do the trades. If you're looking to buy a piece of furniture, you are helping that craftsman live their life. But the reason bespoke furniture is so expensive is because our overhead is expensive and the machines are expensive and I pay a really good wage to my employees and it takes a long time to learn the skills.
It's not something you can really learn in a weekend, you have to have a lot of trial and error. There are just huge risks with taking on a contract and making it for someone and people, as you might know, can be very difficult to please. So if you're looking to buy something, I always say, find someone who's doing something different and try not to complain so much about the price.
But if you're into bespoke furniture or you want to have something that's unique, go out and find people who are out there and probably there's someone in your town, even if they're in a small town, that's making something. And I would also say try to stay away from what is trendy now. Like sure, epoxy, run tables, or whatever is cool and trendy.
But you're spending your money on something that probably won't have value later only because it's not unique and there's a lot of people who do that kind of thing. So try to find someone who's making something truly unique and is really putting themselves on the line and you'll know. You'll know when you meet someone because they'll be working in a shop and it'll seem like they are stressed for money and stress for time.
And those are the people that you want to work with because they're really out there making stuff and making it, doing the difficult work that is owning your own small shop. People are so big on following rules, they forget to be self-expressive and that's the whole point. And I think why people like to come to me for stuff is because we always try to put our personal stamp on it.
SPEAKER: Now that you are a new father yourself, which congratulations.
JASON PICKENS: Thank you.
SPEAKER: At what age is it appropriate to let your small children play with our tools?
JASON PICKENS: I say as early as possible. A really good friend of mine named Marianne Canada actually already bought my daughter a really adorable set of wooden tools. My parents were big on laying down some responsibility on us as kids and I think that was really useful.
In owning something as a kid, I had a lot of confidence in my ability to make things always. I think that just came from being a kid and working with stuff when you didn't have deadlines or boundaries and so you just make anything you wanted to make with all the tools there, I think you're never too young.
I know when I was 9-- because I lived with my mom since my parents are divorced. And my dad-- I was small. And in a big factory, you have these huge cyclone dust collectors that collect dust. And a really tiny person can get inside of that dust collector and pull the sawdust down and that was one of my jobs when I was a kid because I could fit inside of it.
And my mother hated it and she-- I remember her yelling at my dad because I got some sawdust in my eye or something. But I loved it. I thought it was the coolest thing ever because we were like crawling inside of this giant tunnel or whatever and I just-- it was like my own little world in there and you're in there scraping out sawdust and you really feel like you're helping the family.
SPEAKER: I'm trying to picture you climbing inside this dust collector, and I'm imagining that scene in Willy Wonka where they're in like that turbine with the soda that makes you float.
JASON PICKENS: Yeah. It's a lot like that just way, way more claustrophobic and way hotter because the Alabama sun cooks those things. It's like sitting outside. And I remember, you get in there and it's like-- it's got to be 120 degrees there.
SPEAKER: It sounds really safe. But I'm glad it gave you-- I'm glad it gave you a sense of purpose. Jason, I want everyone to be able to follow along and see what you're getting into next because it's always something different. So where can we find you on social media?
JASON PICKENS: My social media handle is the @djpickens although these days with the new baby, I'm not posting as much as I nearly should and my website is out there. You can Google search me, you can see me on different HGTV shows, and I'm out there with a little searching. Not even a little, probably, just my name. Thank you for having me. This is awesome.
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SPEAKER: We hope you enjoyed this episode of HGTV Obsessed. I am feeling inspired to pull out the Good China tonight. I mean, lasagna Thursday deserves it. I want to give special thanks again to Rajiv Surendra and Jason Pickens for sharing their passions and talents with us.
You can watch Rajiv's Apartment Tour on HGTV Handmade and follow Jason @djpickens on Instagram to see all the incredible furniture interiors he fabricates by hand. We've got more about both of our guests at the show notes at hgtv.com/podcast, and as usual, if you love today's episode, please head over to Apple Podcasts to rate and review HGTV Obsessed. We want five stars, you guys.
Don't forget to follow HGTV Obsessed wherever you listen to podcasts so you never miss an episode and I'll see you next Thursday.
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