New Delhi-“The Chair is omnipresent yet discreet. It stays unobtrusively in our lives. Modest as it is, however, the chair, symbolically, rises above mere utility to become a metaphor for status in families, communities, and in society. The Chair confers power to anyone without discrimination,” Godrej CMD Jamshyd N. Godrej observes in ‘From The Frugal To The Ornate – Stories Of The Seat In India’ that the multinational conglomerate has published to celebrate its storied journey over the centuries from the simple “baithak” to the ergonomically-designed varieties of today.
Sarita Sundar, a graphic artist, researcher and founder of the Hanno consultancy that visualizes and curates diverse narratives with a particular focus on museum, heritage and social communication, and who has written the book’s eight lead essays, takes this further.
“Many of the seats we use today have existed for centuries, some evolving through time, many staying true to the original form, each acquiring through time and use, an aura, mystique, and power. The fabled Peacock Throne wound its way from Delhi to Persia, scattering not just stories of glory and grandeur, but also a precious stone or two, with a leg supposed to have surfaced across the Atlantic as recently as 1990. Myths such as this live in our imagination – breeding, defining and shaping our relationship with the ‘things’ with which we interact, and so also with the people associated with them,” Sundar writes in the Introduction.
She recalls that it was the dignity and loftiness with which her grandfather assumed his seat that drew her – and most of the village – to his side over and over again.
“The chair upon which he sat, upon which he spent most of his day, was a standard issue teak and canvas seat. Every morning, a fresh white muslin towel was laid out. Every morning, he would pick it up, shake it out, use it to swat the chair assiduously, stretch it as if to ensure symmetry, and lay it down with utmost precision before assuming his position on the verandah. It was a station of vantage and power, angled as it was to command a view of any approaches to the house or of any emerging from within,” Sundar writes.
The first chapter – From the Simple Paatlo to the Ceremonial Pidha – examines the commonalities and differences by looking at seats across the country that use locally available materials and cater ostensibly to immediate and local needs.
The second chapter – A Queen’s Leg, a Makara’s Gaping Jaw, an Acanthus Leaf, a Ball & Claw: The Seat in Colonial India – comprises seats traceable to the pre- and post-colonial periods, displaying a range of influences from classically English, to the Dutch and Portuguese furniture styles. Distinct traces of applied ornament with Indian influences – often inspirations from Mughal or Hindu architecture – or of the Indo-Saracenic style, set these pieces apart from their European counterparts.
The concluding chapter of section one – Power, Posture & Privilege: The Politics of the Seat in India – explores understandings of how power and dominion are established and exercised, by examining material culture practices in vernacular, colonial and contemporary expressions.
Modernism’s legacy and influence in the field of design can be said to have been birthed at three citadels: the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, The Chandigarh Project, and within the factories and design centres of companies like Godrej & Boyce. All three came into existence around the same time in the mid-20th century in response to a call from the newly-formed independent government in India to participate in fashioning a progressive secular Indian modernism. Chapter four of section two – Citadels of Modernism: Monumental Markers of a National Vision – examines the evolution of seats within these establishments that, even while separate and distinct, aligned intent towards socially and politically progressive movements.
Chapter five – Journeys towards a Spiritual Modernism: A Political Stance or a Sustainable Ethic? – which concludes section two, speaks of a style without an accredited moniker, which extols simple forms and roughly-hewn materials. Seats that are part of this aesthetic uphold convictions of the dignity of labour and life of the simplest of craftsmen.
Chapter six of section three – Poetry in the Common and Everyday: The Lure of the Ordinary – celebrates and examines the banal, the quotidian, the obvious, the common, the ordinary, the habitual. Many of the seats in this section exist on the fringes of design practice: the ‘mooda’ or low cane seat that is often made and sold across the country, or the simple plastic chair that makes a steadfast appearance in waiting rooms, marriage halls, security cabins and even museum hallways.
Chapter seven – The Post Seat: An Explosion of Pluralisms – looks at seats that are a reaction to the homogeneity of the modern idiom; however, it also highlights those that have taken a defiant stance against any previous norms of seating. Initiated in 2015, Godrej Design Lab of Godrej Interio has been a catalyst in inspiring and invigorating these experiments by providing a platform for innovators to create new Indian design idioms.
Chapter eight – A Reflexive and Romantic Turn: The Neomodern Reaction – that concludes section three describes how the seats in vogue since the turn of the 21st century have celebrated the local and the handcrafted, as well as the communities and histories that have participated in their creation, while continuing a formal and cordial, if not ideological dialogue with the International Modernist Style.
In addition, there is a fourth section with contributions from Abigail McGowan – Unsettling Chairs: Designing Seating in mid-century Bombay; Lakshmi Subramaniam – Designing the Modern Chair: Godrej and Indian Office Spaces; and Sujatha Shankar Kumar – A Chair for Everyone: NID and Early Progressive Modern Indian Expressions.
Overall, as Sundar points out, the attempt “is to crosslink disciplines, to cut across histories and geographies, to look beyond concealments, to unearth the stories of the hidden and essential, and thereby unravel nuanced insights”.
It’s the laudable culmination of the collaboration between Godrej Archives, the Godrej Group’s business archive, as part of their various engagements with art and culture, and Hanno on the research and outcomes of this project – sharing an interest in objects, their ‘thingness’, and their histories.
In fact, it should be essential reading wherever design is taught. (IANS)
