New Furniture

As you know, my wife has become the social center of our existence in Delhi.  She has impressively joined a few expat groups and made some very nice friends with whom we can spend time complaining about India, Indians and all things sub-continent.  The biggest benefit from all this socializing, though, has been gleaning the years of experience from the other expats that would have taken us a decade to accumulate.  I have written about a few of the finds, such as the beef place and other grocery related discoveries, but the latest find is more Indian - a furniture maker.

On Saturday, Olga and I trudged down to the aforementioned furniture maker to see what we could see.  I had allocated about 30 minutes, because we were scheduled at the Italian Embassy's restaurant for some pizza and pasta (another find from my socialite wife) and I wanted to maximize my Italiano time.  The "store" was located in a district mainly known for textile factories in the 1970s, but had degraded into a makeshift residential / industrial area full of broken streets and rubble.  The place looked like Baghdad without the glitter and sophistication.  The actual furniture place which consisted of two 4 story buildings separated by a city block, so to get from one building to the other you had to navigate the pock-marked streets, dodge traffic and under-supervised children (not a great combination).  Both building could have used a street-appeal make-over, but it is all about what is inside.  

What we found inside was a treasure trove of furniture, both old, new and a mixture.  There were hideous Hindi pieces from the 1970s next to beautiful antique trunks.  The real finds, though, were the new pieces that had antiques incorporated into them.  These were armoires with ancient temple doors, there were coffee tables with intricate caved windowsills for sides and TV stands with a variety of fronts on them.  We pursued room after room and floor after floor for well over an hour and found some really unique items, but nothing that we could not live without or needed to get the measurements.  In the last room, as we were leaving, we spied this little gem.

You can see the figures of women on each side

We had been looking for something unique for the drawing room (living room) upon which to place the TV and TV related items, but nothing really seemed interesting enough.  Our usual bland wood tastes get lost against the massive white walls of the apartment, so finding something unique, with a bit of the right colors has proven difficult.  This piece is the front of a very old dowry box which would be given with the women to the men's family before the wedding and the cabinet is built from teak to match the distressed feel.   The combinations of green, yellow and red match our furniture and the carpet, so we were quite happy and made the impulse buy!


The place has some very unique items and I am sure that this piece is simply the beginning.  I am told that he makes furniture upon request and we need a few more pieces to fill the apartment.  The only question will be how to get them home?