Nityan Unnikrishnan

It started in 2013 with a birthday gift. Then based in New Delhi, artist Nityan Unnikrishnan, designed a wood-and-cane chair inspired by George Nakashima, as a gift for a friend. Now, almost 10 years and several iterations later, that chair has evolved, through a collaboration with Phantom Hands, into the Palakkad Chair.

Furniture forms a persistently-innocuous imagery in Nityan Unnikrishnan’s paintings. Transitional-style chairs, cupboards, bureaus, and stools lie strewn, toppled or occupied by people; acting as a narrative device as well as pinning down the story in a particular time and milieu. “I make characters out of the furniture, which is partly due to my design background, but also because I like these objects and they mean something to me,” explains the artist.

This profusion of furniture can be attributed to Nityan’s time at the National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmedabad, but also to his childhood. Growing up in the coastal town of Kozhikode, Kerala, ‘wanting to be everywhere else but at school’, the artist often landed up at his grandfather’s furniture factory in Palakkad. Joyous moments were spent exploring the farmlands, playing with cattle, and later, when he was a bit older, ‘tinkering with tools in the giant shed to make pen stands, many of them’.

Nityan began dabbling with furniture design, ‘not furniture making’ as he clarifies, during his time in Delhi, where he practised ceramics for 10 years following his graduation from NID in 2002. He set up The Calicut Company in 2013 to lend a credence of formality to the designs he created for friends and clients requesting the odd bureau, side table, bed, or dining table. Scaling up this venture was the last thing on his mind as he considered it a vocation and not a serious enterprise.