Two Indian students have graduated with distinction from one of the world leading furniture design schools.
Shubham Goel, from New Delhi, and Tejesh Modi, from Bangalore, have earned high praise from the Chippendale International School of Furniture in Scotland.
The Chippendale school takes students from around the world for its immersive furniture design courses. This year, students also came from the UK, USA, Germany, Austria, Poland, Singapore, South Korea and Australia.
Shubham Goel
Shubham Goel is one graduate who should have no trouble marketing the business he intends to set up in either Mumbai or his home town of New Delhi.
He already has a degree in marketing and advertising from New Delhi University and, prior to studying at the Chippendale school, was an account executive working for one of the world’s leading advertising agencies.
However, he has always wanted to follow a more personally creative career and to build a business that was his own – a course of thinking that has taken him from India to Scotland.
Shubham’s new business, West End Furnishings, will primarily design and make bespoke furniture, but fusing traditional designs and materials from Asia with influences from the West.
“India is a rapidly developing country with an international outlook. What I would like to do is take the best of contemporary Indian design and give it a slight twist – bringing that international dimension to a domestic market,” he said.
One of his signature pieces is a beautiful writing desk in olive ash and spalted beech that provides echoes of that approach, developing a style that bridges countries and continents.
Tejesh Modi
It’s a console table that is also a work of art and which was created to test the limits of free-form wooden design.
It’s the inspiration of Tejesh Todi, from Bangalore, who will now be returning to the family-run Cane Boutique, which has been designing and manufacturing fine furniture in Bangalore for over 20 years, joining both his parents and sister in the business.
Cane Boutique makes high-quality traditional and contemporary furniture ranges which sell across much of India and into the Middle East.
Tejesh’s glass-topped table in veneered rosewood, oak and bendy play is a playful sculpture in wave-form, in contrast to Indian traditional furniture which has greater geometric precision.
Anselm Fraser, principal of the Chippendale school said that “Tejesh and Shubham have demonstrated skill and talent during their year at the school.
“Furniture design and woodworking craftsmanship are a common international language, and we hope that they will take their skills and design perspectives back to India and use them to create fantastic new furniture.