Srelle crafts exclusive hand-made furniture pieces that were first designed for the Chandigarh masterplan by Pierre Jeanneret. Our collection consists of teak and cane designs from the early 1950s.
Srelle produces Chandigarh furniture in Northern India using the same production techniques, production standards and materials used during the early 1950s, and can, therefore, be labeled as Chandigarh furniture.
SRELLE
About Chandigarh furniture:
During the 1950s, Indias’s Punjab government elected to build a new capital city, which would become the city of Chandigarh. Alongside Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret would be assigned to many architectural projects, as well as the responsibility to design the blueprints for the furniture pieces that would be made for the government and public buildings.
Pierre Jeanneret handed over these blueprints to multiple carpentry studios across the Punjab region, and each would then start the production of the many furniture pieces for the city, according to the project specifications.
OFFICE CHAIR
Technically, there is no official description as to what an original “Chandigarh” or “Pierre Jeanneret” furniture piece is since the furniture has never been granted a single production license.
Many refer to an “original” piece being a vintage piece, a piece that was produced during the 1950s and has since been restored.
However, Punjab studios had been making the pieces for the city of Chandigarh until the 1980s, and some are still producing the pieces for the international market today.
LIBRARY CHAIR
The term “original” is also used by vintage dealers to describe a vintage piece, a piece with a specific “originality license” or to describe a piece with a particular marking.
This was the period during which carpentry studios would make the pieces for the city of Chandigarh; however, the vast majority of pieces that were made during these 30 yeas vary substantially, and most have to be significantly restored to be used today. For example, the student chairs that were made during the early 1950s were produced using natural cane, whilst most models that were made after the 1960s were made using plastic canning for durability. The designs also varied substantially, depending on the order specifications, and no piece had a specific model name.
