Introducing PAT and J.K. Co.

PAT and J.K. Co. — PJK — is a sole proprietorship of Mr. Yuvraj Singh Pathania. It is not one shopfront with one thing to sell. It is the umbrella under which several ventures in art and craft are built, run and held to the same standard. This is the first entry in its journal, and the plainest statement we can make of what it is for.

Why an umbrella

Every small venture spends its first year solving problems that have nothing to do with why it exists. A name. A website. Books, suppliers, contracts, a way of answering the telephone. By the time all of that is settled, the attention that should have gone into the work has gone into the scaffolding instead.

We would rather build the scaffolding once, build it properly, and keep it. PJK holds the parts every venture needs and none of them should have to invent: the standard of work, the way people are dealt with, the day-to-day operations, and the technology each one runs on. What is left to a venture is the thing it actually exists to do.

Ventures, not departments

Each venture under PJK trades under its own name, speaks in its own voice and answers to its own customers. None of them is a department of something larger. A gallery ought to feel like a gallery, not like the art wing of a holding concern.

What they hold in common sits underneath, out of sight: one proprietor, one standard, and the same people behind the scenes who will not let a shortcut through.

What passes between them

The useful part of an umbrella is not what sits above the ventures. It is what passes between them. A supplier proven by one venture is a supplier the next can trust. A lesson about how a material ages, how a client wants to be spoken to, how long a thing honestly takes to make — that is paid for once and then kept.

So each new initiative begins further along than the last. It inherits the judgement of everything PJK has already done, and it is expected to add something of its own to the pile before the next one starts.

Phulhaar Gallery by PJK

The latest venture under the umbrella is Phulhaar Gallery by PJK, a gallery for fine and contemporary art.

Phulhaar curates: it finds work worth living with and shows it properly. It also places work, which is a separate craft. A piece does not finish its journey on a gallery wall. It finishes it in a room — with a light above it, a colour behind it, and a life going on around it.

That is why Phulhaar works alongside curators, interior designers, decorators and mood setters as a matter of course. Between them they settle not only what is acquired, but where it will hang, what it will hang beside, and how the room should feel once it is there. The gallery works with businesses and with retail clients alike: curating a collection for one, mixing pieces into a finished room for another, and frequently doing both at once.

How we mean to grow

Slowly, and on purpose. A venture joins PJK when it is ready to stand on its own, not when there is a gap on a page to fill. We would rather have three ventures we are proud of than ten we find ourselves explaining.

We plan in decades. That is an unfashionable thing to say and an easy thing to claim, so the only fair way to read it is to watch what we do over a long time.

What you can hold us to

Our values are written down in public so that they can be held against us: how we price, how we describe what we sell, how artists are paid, and what we do with whatever we learn about you. They apply to everyone who works under PJK, and to every outside business we deal with.

When there is news worth having — a new venture, a show, a change we think you should know about — it will appear here first.