Take a chair…

(Published in The Hindu Sunday Magazine yesterday)

Once upon a time a chair was something to sit on, a bed was meant for sleeping in and a table was best used during mealtime or as a work-surface. Today, furniture is often more a design statement than a merely functional element in home décor. This is a fairly typical feature in high-budget urban homes, or those that are well protected from the environment and, most importantly, have a team of people to care for the interiors. Catering to this need is a panoply of home stores and design studios in Mumbai and elsewhere. One such is the Pallate Design Studio in Mahalakshmi, South Mumbai, which recently featured its first showing of designer work by its creator and Head Designer, Shahid Datawala, and the young and enthusiastic Priyanka Gala.

Trained in Product Design at the Raffles Design International College, Mumbai, award-winner Gala started as a fashion and jewellery designer, but soon made the short transit to furniture. In her first collection, she shows off facets of her own personality, with a touch of feminine charm and practical functionality. Datawala, a man of many talents – among them photography and garment and jewellery design, classical music and “many other things” – uses dramatic blocks of colour and graphic shapes that, he says, are “inspired by anything I could see around me in my everyday life”.

Gala knows what any girl wants and gives it to her with characteristic élan. Walking into two of the ‘rooms’ designed by her is like coming home. One, done up entirely in black and white and an occasional pale taupe-grey, used various permutations of design and texture that is, strangely, not overwhelming in its starkness. The bed-head, with its mailbox-like shelving in a high-gloss finish is perfect for all the nuances in a feminine life, from chapstick and hand-cream to alarm clocks, books, telephone, medicines, mirror, tissues…”It’s my favourite colour combination,” Gala says, showing off the cushions, the spreads, the seats, even the screen. The same finish is used on many other pieces, from a dresser to a work-desk, closet doors and shelving units. Another space, also intimately sized, is more informal, obviously young and girly – with greens and pinks dominating, everything from the bangles on the dressing table to the wallpaper colour-coordinated for best effect. A larger space is a model living-dining area, with gilded ‘commas’ a recurring motif on chair-backs, drawer handles and couches. This is far more formal and masculine –“the colours used here are less feminine,” Gala acknowledges.

Datawala’s work is somehow darker, deeper, perhaps a reflection of his many experiences as a photographer. The pieces he has created for this show of his collections for the Pallate Design Studio need a much larger scale and space to be shown off. A brilliant red table base from his Atom collection has ‘branches’ that come off a central stem, “like an atomic structure, or DNA”, says Datawala. His Poached Egg table is an ominously clean white arc set with a yellow centre, with more pieces that match the same eggy theme – chairs, a sofa, a centre table. The Orange Peel sofa melds textures and curves to create segments of vivid orange, while the 69 set has the obvious lines of the numbers with a wicked sexual innuendo attached. And the clean white and chrome of the Arc ensemble balance nicely on bases that are neatly curved. These are all very high-maintenance pieces, Datawala agrees, and need big homes with substantial staff to make sure there are no scratches on the high-gloss laminate over wood and ply, he knows, trying to eliminate one such scar from the edge of his Poached Egg dining table.

In the crowd of familiar styles of furniture - be it Chippendale, Mackintosh, Dhrangadhra or a more mundane Durian – the work of some inventive and innovative designers tends to stand out. You just need to know where to find the excitement!