Mann Singh at Asia now - India

Indian designer Mann Singh exhibited his 'Kachnar  (a species of flowering plant) Bowl' (produced in limited edition for the Italian manufacturer driade) and his most recent work, a prototype of the 'Phul' chair in Designboom's 'Asia Now' exhibition at dwell on design in Los Angeles.

Mann Singh's 'kachnar' series for Driade's Shalemar collection consists of silvered baskets  of interwoven twigs, and bowls composed of stiffened leaves and flowers. He uses the hand-made process for his prototypes; stainless steel is more commonly used with industrial processes; the brass sheets along the edges are smoothened down with the mallet and the hammer. He likes the texture of these pleats, what happens often is that one tries to leave things a little unfinished to distinguish hand made from machine made.

Each 'phul' chair is hand-made from cast stainless steel, with no two pieces alike. The seat and back are constructed from an intertwining leaf and twig motif.

This is what Mann Singh has to say about his creation

“The problem with pictures is that things are not always the way they appear. This chair (which I rather unimaginatively dubbed phul (should it have even more unimaginatively been called patti??) appears at first sight to be supremely uncomfortable and somewhat delicate. The first reaction people have is "I don’t think I’m sitting in that for love or money." Which makes their reaction to sitting in it all that more fun. I don’t know whether it’s the fact that it’s comfortable enough to sit in or the relativity of their expectations and experience (I’m expecting a certain "anonymous" to rap my knuckles for language), but the expressions are fun to watch! The chair is made in stainless steel, assembled from individually cast elements, which means no two chairs are identical. The chairs stack!!