India’s oldest carpet maker opens its flagship store
You’re likely to be, says Amrita Singh, at OBEETEE Studio, a venerable, nearly century-old carpet-maker’s first retail outlet in India
All these years — a full 99 of them — OBEETEE has been a fascinating but somewhat mysterious name. One had heard tell of its connection with English royalty and its adorning the highest residence in our own land. The hand-knotted and handwoven rugs and carpets that bore its name were only sold at such preserves of luxury as the Taj Hotels’ Khazana boutiques. Its name itself came soaked in quaint nostalgia — clearly an oldfashioned expansion of the initials O, B and T. Now, all is clear.
The company opened its first retail outlet in India, called OBEETEE Studio, on the Ghitorni-sultanpur stretch on MG Road, which connects Delhi to Gurugram. Long a hub for furniture and furnishings, this is a classy addition to the list of upscale showrooms. Located a couple of long strides away from the Sultanpur Metro station, the outlet has smart grey walls adorned with goldcoated engravings, accentuating the colours and motifs on each carpet. Gigantic sliders display a dazzling array of rugs, while others are scattered discreetly around the store.
It all looks less like a store and more like a museum. Which may not be a bad way to approach the place, in case you’re intimidated. But don’t be: prices range from an affordable ~250 per square foot to ~11,000. Meanwhile, here you can both admire and learn about rugs. Almost every large carpet is accompanied with a tiny plaque that details the name of the collection and what inspired its creation. And if you can in fact afford to buy what looks like a collectible, well, you’re in the right place.
Founded as Oakley Bowden & Taylor (yes, O, B and T) in 1920, the company has been exporting rugs to the West from its workshop in Mirzapur, Uttar Pradesh. It now employs more than 20,000 weavers and is today India’s largest and perhaps oldest exporter of rugs. It also prides itself on being a socially responsible employer, a company that has produced more than 500,000 carpets without the involvement of a single case of child labour (which the industry is infamous for).
Some of the collections on display include Museum. From Mamluk and Sultanabad rugs to Persian and Turkish rugs, the collection has been inspired by collections of dynasties that hang in some of the world’s greatest museums, including New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art and London’s Victoria and Albert Museum. Each such rug has a high density of 300 knots per square inch.
In another collection titled Miniature
Painting, romance, folklore and the history of North India make its way onto contemporary weaves, antique washes and distorted symmetry. Veteran fashion designer Tarun Tahiliani lifted classic motifs off canvases to create this collection. Prices for a carpet from this collection start at ~5 lakh for a 8 x 10 piece.
“At heart, we are rug-makers and not rugsellers,” says Rudra Chatterjee, chairman, OBEETEE. In 2007, when the global financial crisis stymied the growth of most organisations in the West, OBEETEE looked East, specifically to India, to sell. Its carpets already graced grand mansions in India: Delhi’s elegant Imperial Hotel boasts OBEETEE rugs; and two majestic OBEETEE rugs, one of which measures 452 square metres and contains billions of intricate knots, are attractions at Rashtrapati Bhavan. For the last dozen years or so, the brand’s wares have also been sold at online home furnishings portals such as Pepperfry.
While Chatterjee’s words may make him sound like a legacy carpet-maker, his father, Dipankar Chatterjee, bought a controlling stake in the company as late as 1998. He himself rejoined OBEETEE in 2007 after a brief stint in 1998. The family business has been tea for nearly a century, which too went high-profile when it acquired the Makaibari estate in Darjeeling, famed for being the world’s oldest tea estate and now purveyors of luxury organic teas.
Still, after more than nine decades of supplying high-quality hand-tufted rugs to luxurious hotels and homes, OBEETEE’S going retail owes entirely to the Chatterjee scion. He presided over the opening of a store in New York City’s West 25th Street, its only other store in the world, four years ago. With its entry into India, OBEETEE returns to its roots.
PRICES AT THE OBEETEE STORE RANGE FROM AN AFFORDABLE ~250 PER SQUARE FOOT TO ~11,000