Please spread the word :)It has for long been the destination where the world-weary have come to for spiritual solace, the Francophiles have sought out, sniffing some Anglo-French culture, and the Chennaiite has rushed to simply for some cheap booze. Lately, though, Pondicherry is attracting seekers of a different sort: the ones lured by its abundant wealth of colonial and antique furniture. From French or English colonial pieces and replicas of classic furniture to trendy cane couches and old-meets-new hybrids or contemporary and futuristic constructions, there is enough to delight the discerning or casual tourist in Pondicherry’s furniture bazaar. If one is awed by the craft of the Chettinad pillar, another can’t resist the comfort of the old rosewood planter’s chair or the rocking chair with a pouch for a head rest or the ergonomically delightful revolving chair in wood. Such is the embarrassment of its sheer bounty in wood that leading trader K. Muthuvijayanathan declares, “After Calcutta, Pondicherry is the centre for antiques in India.”
One doesn’t even have to go far. Evidence of Pondicherry’s furniture booty starts appearing all along ECR or the East Coast Road past the former French colony, even before you have hit town. “When I came here 17 years ago,” Patrick Lafourcade, a French furniture-maker and designer, restorer of church artefacts and building designer, reminisces, “there were just two or three shops.” Now there are 53 shops on the ECR stretch between Pondicherry and Auroville, the best location to snag walk-in clients. Jean-Marc Joullie, partner in Cane Lab. (Photograph by Martin Louis) Within Pondicherry, one of the eye-catching outlets is the two-year-old Cane Lab, boasting a high-profile clientele, and a white sprawling house-cum-office-workshop, an initiation into the world of futuristic cane. As Jean-Marc Joullie, a partner in the venture, says, the idea was “to bring modernity into rattan (cane)”. So a cane couch becomes transformed into “a place to lounge and cuddle” and a hanging seat becomes a place that absorbs you into its huge innards so “you can curl up away from the world”.
Its French colonial roots have contributed to the place’s furniture riches no doubt, but Pondicherry’s famed adeptness at turning wood to stunning effects has also attracted Germans, French and Japanese craftsmen. One of them, the Japanese-American George Katsutoshi Nakashima, came here in 1937, and gave Pondicherry a significant bit of its furniture history. Working at the time for a company commissioned to build a dormitory at the Aurobindo Ashram, the eminent woodworker, architect and furniture-maker was sent to Pondicherry as a construction consultant. It wasn’t long before the father of the American craft movement and leading innovator of 20th-century furniture design became a disciple of Sri Aurobindo. It was from him that he earned the Sanskrit name of Sundarananda (one who delights in beauty) and it was here that he made his first furniture. His influence is evident even today at the ashram workshop which is stocked with books containing his designs. According to the workshop manager, Devendra, Nakashima’s daughter, now in New York, still orders furniture from this carpentry unit.
Needless to say, the ashram has become a major player in Pondicherry’s furniture business. Its sturdy and comfortable sofas, beds and king-sized rocking chairs, made of timber sourced from Trichy, grace not just homes in Pondicherry but also attract a string of foreign buyers. For families who have moved here following the call of Aurobindo as well as ashram devotees the world over, beds, chairs and tables from the ashram’s carpentry shop are a must-have. Auroville resident Kenji Matsumoto, a 63-year-old sound engineer-turned-sailor who then turned furniture maker, crafts Japanese-inspired furniture to order, such as low tables and boxes of different sizes for keeping jewellery or bric-a-brac. French furniture-maker Patrick Lafourcade. (Photograph by Martin Louis) No one seems able to quantify the exact annual value of the Pondicherry furniture business, but no one doubts that the going is good. If, originally, Pondicherry’s furniture-makers were catering mainly to overseas buyers—in Europe, the US, Canada and even Australia and New Zealand—the recession in the West and the India growth story is bringing in buyers from closer home.
People from Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bangalore and Chennai are now homing in on Pondicherry to furnish their dream homes. German couple Clemens and Coco Gruttman, who started a furniture business 15 years ago, both restoring old furniture and also making their own (like their signature ‘Whisky Chair’, with an indent on one to nest your whisky glass), confirm this fact. Ten years ago, they say, only 20 per cent of their furniture was sourced by buyers in India while the rest went abroad. Now, it is the reverse. “Unlike in the West,” Coco observes, “where most young people setting up a home go to the nearest Ikea showroom to furnish their apartment,” she is increasingly encountering here young customers who “value heritage” and want to splurge on an expensive piece or two. Spending Rs 8,000-Rs 16,000 on a cane chair might seem a luxury to some, but then it’s the spending power of the young Indian comes as oxygen to Pondicherry’s thriving furniture business.Amour Hand Woven Hanging Chair
Material : Indian & Rattan Cane Assembly Type : Pre Assembled Dimensions (L x W x H) in Inches : 24 x 22 x 48 Disclimer : Product colour might slightly vary due to photographic lighting sources or your monitor settings. 25 Days Required for shippingAnthropomorphized testicles are nothing new in advertising. But Australian agency Clemenger BBDO in Melbourne offers a humorous new addition to the pantheon with this campaign for Bonds underwear—in which two balls banter about life down under, which gets markedly better with the arrival of the company's product. "Men's testicles have to put up with a lot in life. Heat, cold and—shudder—impact all affect them," says agency group managing director Simon Lamplough. "The least men can do is keep 'The Boys' comfy in a nice new pair of Bonds undies." This is illustrated in the first of what will be three comical online films, featuring a pair of balls hanging around in wicker chairs, arguing with the brain, dealing with sudden impacts and generally seeking a less confusing, painful existence—which Bonds provides.