The RichHistory Of Indian Chairs Revealed.

Sarita Sundar’s lavishly illustrated new book From The Frugal To The Ornate: Stories of the Seat in India traces the cultural evolution of the seat’ and the many chairs it spawned over the centuries

- Murali Menon

In his 2016 book, Now I Sit Me Down, the architect Witold Rybczynski writes: "The way we choose to sit, and what we choose to sit on, says a lot about us: our values, our tastes, the things we hold dear." The history of seats and chairs is a social history rather than an evolutionary one. Popular wisdom is that chairs are a European creation that was brought to India by colonisers. This is largely on account of the fact that much of innovations in chair design in the last century including Verner Panton's Stacking Chair (1960), Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's Barcelona (1929), Le Corbusier's Grand Confort (1928), Arne Jacobsen's Egg (1958) and Charles & Ray Eames' Lounge & Ottoman and LCW (1956 & 1946), all came from Europe and America.

Surprisingly though, India has had a rich history of chair design that goes back hundreds of years. It is just that this history had not been comprehensively documented so far. Sarita Sundar, the Bengaluru-based graphic artist, researcher, designer and founder of design and heritage consultancy, Hanno, has sought to fill the void with her recently released From the Frugal to the Ornate: Stories of the Seat in India. The lavishly illustrated book, which traces the cultural evolution of the seat in the country and is published in association with Godrej Archives, is the kind of tome that should ideally be read seated on a grandly upholstered wing chair, with your feet up on an ottoman.

It deals with a sprawling topic that encompasses everything from humble vernacular, and ceremonial, seats, and grand thrones to colonial icons such as the Roorkhee Chair and furniture made from tubular steel by the likes of Godrej & Boyce that lined office halls in the last century.