History of Indian Furniture
By: Tanya Agrawal
Tags: Culture, Chair, Furniture, Design, India

Floor sitting culture of India

Image Source: theatlantic.com

For much of India’s history, furniture has never been a part of the home. Customs and traditions throughout most of India determine that people slept on the floor and meals were also enjoyed seated there. Therefore, homes usually had cushions for seating or perhaps even some low stools. There was definitely no need for other furniture items like beds, dressers, tables, or even desks.

The culture of sitting on the floor is likely to develop etiquette like removing footwear before entering the house or wearing loose clothes and slippers and sandals rather than tight clothes and laced-up shoes. It might also have influenced the architecture of the house like a smooth floor with sitting place covered with mats, low cabinets close to floor level for convenience.

14th century Vijayanagar Empire in Southern India

Image Source: scroll.in

Few cultures were in furniture-making tradition, but it was mostly for palaces, temples, or public houses. It was mostly for ceremonial, like royal thrones. Furniture making was at that time more of art and trade than the utility. Craftsmen preserved and immortalized folklore and legends in wood.

Charpai is one of the earliest pieces of furniture that has been used for sitting and sleeping.

15th-century Portuguese Influence

Image Source: facebook.com

Portuguese invaded and conquered parts of India. They established residential complexes as well as business settlements, with their headquarters in Southern India. The lack of furniture in India they used back at home dismayed them. They shipped some furniture from their kingdom and commissioned Indian craftsmen to replicate them and thus, influenced the domestic furniture of the country.

This gave birth to the Indo-Portuguese style. Although the style was Portugal, the materials used were Indian. These included furniture like large cabinets with intricately inlaid and incised geometric patterns.

Indian craftsmen created furniture that had very decorative qualities because of wood carving techniques and inlays. For the inlays, they used a variety of precious materials, like ebony and ivory, cut and placed so they lay flush, creating a smooth, flat surface.

16th-century Dutch Influence

Following the Portuguese, Dutch formed trade bases in the Southern part of India. Their furniture making style gave rise to the Indo-Dutch style. These comprised of light-colored hardwoods with incised and inlaid decorations or dark woods like ebony with elaborate carved floral decorations. The indo-Dutch style was more contemporary than the Portuguese style.

Mughal Style

Image Source: google.com

Mughals arrived in India around the mid-16th Century, bringing along their influence in furniture. Mughal style furniture is mostly found in Northern India. These include furniture like tables and writing desks made of dark hardwoods like ebony with decorations of inlaid bone or ivory or mirrors. It is mostly done in Jodhpur now, where the craftsmen use handcrafted pieces of camel bone put in a traditional motif.

18th-century British Influence

Image Source: google.com

By the 18th century, a lot of furniture increasingly echoed English styles like Chippendale and Sheraton. But even these furniture included Indian material and decorative flourishes. English cultivated teak as a ‘royal tree’ for the shipping industry as it is resilient to water and weather thus, teak gain popularity for quality woodwork. The furniture included chairs with flat seats and high and straight backs with intricate carvings.

Post Colonisation

The furniture industry in India evolved with the departure of the British, ornamentation and wood varieties have changed, mostly because of price considerations. As the 19th century brought along ornamentation, the 20th century moved to simple and utilitarian furniture. Price considerations have driven down ornamentation to the minimum, and cheaper wood varieties have come to be used to cater to the huge low-cost demand. Furniture eventually also became lighter and was customized to fit our households and busy lifestyle.

Image Source: google.com

The availability of quality wood has been one of the reasons behind the widespread furniture making in India. However, with the restrictions by the government on the cutting of trees not only the price of wooden furniture is affected but also compelled to explore other materials.

Despite developments in manufacturing techniques and technology, Indian maintains its traditional way of using simple tools in the manufacturing process. Indian furniture is still carved from traditional tools that retain its ethnicity. The traditional furniture making process made Indian furniture the symbol of durability and elegance. This also makes each and every Indian furniture piece unique. But owing to present-day mass consumption, the mastery of making one piece of its kind seems to be vanishing.