Chair
Designer Lockwood de Forest American
As a purveyor of Indian goods, de Forest copied this design from a silver chair he had seen and admired in Jodhpur. He then asked the mistri (a subcaste of skilled craftsmen in India) to translate his drawing into a chased brass side chair. This particular chair was fully constructed from teakwood and then covered with brass ornamented with floral designs in repoussé, a metalworking technique in which a malleable metal is shaped by hammering from the reverse side to create a design in relief. This chair epitomizes de Forest’s role not only as a tastemaker and designer who was directly involved with the work of the craftsmen, but that of an ardent patron of the traditional methods of production employed by the mistri.
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