Chandigarh and the “V-chair”
Photo: Roger Davies for Architectural Digest
I recently stumbled upon some history that blows my mind- mainly because of my personal connection to this city and the fact that I had no clue of Corbusier’s correlation to it! There’s a little town in northern India called Chandigarh that’s known for its agriculture and farming. My dad grew up here and I’ve been back with him on multiple visits to see relatives and explore India. Having grown up in California, I was surprised at what a similar feel the outskirts of Chandigarh had to my hometown of Ventura. Both big on agriculture with sweeping fields of growing produce and farmland. Little did I know I was walking the streets of the brainchild of architect Le Corbusier.
Around the 1950’s, India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, dreamed of “a new town, symbolic of the freedom of India…an expression of the nation’s faith in the future” (Catalogue Raisonne du Mobilier: Jeanneret Chandigarh). He enlisted Corbusier’s help who decided to organize the city in a horizontal grid with big avenues rather than building upward like a traditional “vertical” city. He designed most of the infrastructure and used raw concrete as his material of choice.
The curious thing to come out of this historical city was that he enlisted the help of his cousin, Pierre Jeanneret to design and manufacture furniture for public and private buildings- all using wood from the forest-clearing needed to create the city. The “Chandigarh V-chair” was created, along with a ton of other pieces of furniture, which over the past decade has become a collector’s dream.
Antique dealers and collectors from around the world have been visiting Chandigarh and buying up disused stocks of furniture from junkyards. Only until this began happening did the city of Chandigarh finally realize the history the town was literally sitting on. Since then, the Heritage Furniture Committee has been formed to stop the trafficking of cultural objects out of the city and to educate its own citizens of their heritage.
London auction house, Bonham, is auctioning off a series of items designed by Jeanneret and Corbusier. The “V-chair” is said to go for anywhere between $8,000-$12,000 each!
Maybe I should call my relatives in Chandigarh and see if anyone might be sitting on one of these? Pun intended :) A girl can dream right?
