Furniture

Designs of Nitin Gupta

By Nichole L. Reber

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Nitin Gupta might be considered India’s
version of Finn Juhl or Arne Jacobsen, two
Danish Modernist architectural furniture
designers. The architect-cum-furniture
designer’s work carries global aesthetic
qualities and is produced efficiently and
eco-logically. To experience his designs
might be to liken them to a Bauhaus
concerto.
To see his furniture is to see music materialised. Gupta knows exactly
how to reveal wood’s naturally lyrical grains and syncopated knots, be
it in a table, a child’s chair, or household containers. By illuminating
the ebbs and flows, the widths and lengths of the rings in this most
natural of building products, he turns furniture into a concerto that we
listen to with our eyes. His power to illustrate wood’s inherent beauty
keeps us visually glued to the work. The effect brings to mind the
famous quotes, “Architecture is music in space, as it were a frozen
music,” or Vitruvius’ own, “The architect must not only understand
drawing, but music.”
Guptin explains how he honed his lovingly creative talents. “My early
training came from my dad, who gave me a lot of tools to play with
as a kid. The later part of my training has happened in my workshop
and on site. I’m still learning,” he says. He eventually trained and
became an architect but wanted to keep his art accessible. Thus
he started Delhi-based NG’s Designs in 1998, where he designs and
manufactures his work.
Gupta’s skills yield multiple textures to his designs. For instance, one
may first be struck by the purposeful slopes of his curved
chair backs or by the graceful linearity achieved with what less
talented designers could scarcely make of nebulous slabs of
wood. But upon closer inspection it’s the attention Gupta gives
to the wood’s natural characteristics that bring people closer
to his work. If his furniture were children, the world would be a
better place. If his furniture were his spouse, the world would
be populated by more enlightened individuals. Like anything
one truly loves, it beckons to be touched. His occasional uses
of leather and other natural materials to complement the wood
ensure that.
Gupta explains how he lends his work this synaesthetic trait: “I
love all my pieces. Otherwise they don’t get made.”
While we tend to take painstaking care of the artifacts we love,
NG’s Designs’ pieces are easily maintained. They present a
much lighter weight than one would expect upon first sight.
That’s because of his eco-friendly production methods.
“We value wood. So we have created many designs that look
solid but are either hollow or have MDF as a core material,
thus making more products with less amount of raw material,”
he says.
He actually hollows out his larger pieces such as cocktail tables
and reuses the hollowed-out wood pieces to make decorative
accessories. Other scraps might be used as screws, bolts or
other connective instruments to simultaneously grant stability
and lend aesthetic consistency. There are no tacky metal nails
or screws blemishing NG’s designs. There are no random or
haphazardly placed details in his work. Every piece connects to
another with an engineer’s precision. Seeing and appreciating
these details harkens back to Gupta’s Danish inspirations
such as Juhl and Jacobsen. Like a Bauhaus puzzle, each
piece bears a democratic role in the composition. And like the
natural Indian inclination toward sustainable pragmatism, this
very subtle yet important detail also exemplifies the designer’s
concerns for making as much use of the wood as possible.
Use of various woods and materials to complement the wood
gives more flexibility to create such a diverse array of products.
Some pieces, such as chairs, feature leather. It’s yet another of
Gupta’s methods to generate such texture and dimension with
a range of woods that he specially ships from the world over:
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 teak, cedar, oak, African wenge, Australian pine, American
maple. In exploring his work, one sees clearly that Gupta
carefully cultivates the personality of each wood, working with
its temperaments and strengths rather than against them.
Beyond the beauty points, what’s surprising about Gupta’s
designs is that they’re so affordable. It’s common for
shoppers to experience sticker shock at exorbitant price tags,
but in the case of these the surprise comes from the opposite
effect: they’re affordable pieces of true art. They could easily
sell for thrice as much, and while he has sold some pieces to
celebrities – who he won’t name out of modesty – he maintains
affordability as an embrace of accessibility. That philosophy
will likely secure his success when Gupta carries out his plans
to open retail stores. Prices start at ` 500, though of course
more customised designs are more expensive but still very
reasonable.
His prices and skill, in addition to his training as an architect,
help him to interact comprehensively with interior designers
and architects, a part of his job that won’t stop once his retail
stores start thriving. Gupta has furnished entire residences
before, and his corpus includes accessories, such as vase-
like vessels for display on tables or shelves, as well as murals.
It’s this set of unique and varied talents that keep interior and
architectural designers returning to work with him.
“They are not well trained to handle the furniture aspect.
Furniture and accessories form a very important part of a built
environment in terms of aesthetics and function. These days,
more and more people are (recognising) that importance,” he
says.
That importance may come in the form of a polished wood
mount on a glass topped table or some outdoor furniture
to enhance a home’s rustic environs. It may be a recliner
undulating like a flutist’s vibrato or a rocker sloping to an end
like a cadence. Perhaps it’s even a side table that’s raw and
round like a polished boulder or a cocktail table blending two
woods like symbiosis. Whatever he designs, Gupta’s work is
a natural symphony of architecture and furniture.

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