By Eshita Marwah
I don’t remember a time when I wasn’t making something.
Long before design became a profession, it was instinct. Art and aesthetics were part of my everyday life. Something I absorbed quietly, perhaps from my mother, who is a doctor by profession but has always had an innate eye for beauty in its myriad forms. Growing up, I was the child happiest when left alone with craft paper and paint. I made clothes for my dolls, Christmas ornaments out of empty matchboxes, and spent hours painting. Even during my years at boarding school in Kasauli, reading by a wooden window in the library was how I spent most of my days. This was my world before the internet, where imagination beautifully filled the gaps.
Coming from a family of highly educated professionals, and with an affinity towards mathematics, engineering felt like a logical path. I studied electronics engineering, went on to do a post-grad from the University of Pennsylvania, and eventually found myself working in Analog Circuit Design in Boston. Creativity didn’t disappear but shifted to the sidelines. Photography, painting, long walks with a camera in hand became my way of feeding that need. At one point, I came to be known as “the girl with the camera.”
There came a time though when weekends weren’t enough. In 2014, I took a leap of faith, left my job and came back to India to start from scratch. And that is how my design practice, by e & co., took shape. Looking back, it was less a departure and more a return. However, engineering still anchored everything I did. It taught me how to think structurally, how to make things work, how to balance function with form. It trained me to create beauty that lasts, not just beauty that looks good for a moment.
For over a decade now, I’ve been designing products. First for myself and then for clients, creating custom pieces for their homes. While renovating my current office and designing everything in-house, it struck me that these objects didn’t need to exist only in private spaces. They could become a collection of their own. Soon after, I went on a trek to the Himalayas, where journaling and sketching, the idea for The Afternoon Library came to life. It came together slowly, and then all at once. I returned, and within a week, the name, the domain, and the foundation of the brand were in place.
The name comes from everything I love most: libraries, quiet, solitude, sunlit rooms, slow hours, reading, writing, designing, and creating. And our little mascot, the ladybug has been (as I like to call it) my ‘spirit-bug.’ Growing up in the mountains, I spotted them often. Tiny yet striking, perfectly dressed without trying, they quietly did their own thing. Over a year in the making, The Afternoon Library, at its core, is all about keepsakes. Every piece begins as a feeling: an idea imagined, sketched, and slowly brought to life. These are objects meant to be used, returned to, and lived with every day. They don’t chase trends. They don’t age out. They grow older alongside you, gathering meaning and becoming companions.
This is how The Afternoon Library came to be. It was born of the places I have been to, the stories that stayed with me, and the art that inspired me. A small, thoughtful piece of my world, now shared with yours. I hope it brings you the same sense of joy, calm, and contentment that it has brought me.
Welcome to The Afternoon Library.