WHEN QUIRK WORKS
Equal parts of creativity and colour, whim and skill make the products on online portal Bent Chair showstoppers
The Japanese had it right. For them a tea ceremony is not about drinking tea, but about the aesthetics and preparing a bowl of tea from one's heart. In fact, those who love green, Darjeeling, mint or rosemary teas will tell you that the right teapot has the ability to turn a daily ritual into a sublime interlude. No one knows this better than 28-year-old Natasha Jain who along with her father Neeraj Jain started Bent Chair, an online marketplace for out-of-the-box home décor, furnishings and furniture. Her favourite items (hazard a guess) on the website happen to be the baby pink, bright blue and mellow yellow scooters, typewriters, toasters and dog teapots. Launched in December 2015, teapots are not the only fantastic finds on this site. Keep a eye out for consoles that look like men ready to sprint across the room, a coffee table where a hippo appears to be holding the glass top, pug-shaped bookends and sculptures, dancing elephant paperweights, lazy bear platters, plane wine holders and cushions that look less like pillows and more like cameras. There’s even a ‘botanics’ section with faux floral sticks and faux potted plants.
According to Natasha, the name Bent Chair refers
to something that has been altered from its original form to a rather unusual figure. “When I started doing up my Delhi-home I realised that there aren’t many affordable yet beautiful things for your house. The options were very limited. So, through Bent Chair, we decided to create and curate some amazing, reasonably priced, good quality products for the home,” says Natasha, whose website went global last month. This means that people from the US, Canada, South East Asia and Western Europe can now purchase Bent Chair products.
The process involves bringing artisans, designers and engineers, together to create something unique and beautiful. They even have a 40,000 sq ft design and manufacturing facility in rural Haryana that empowers local artisans through a co-operative business ownership model.
“We tested the market through several pop-up shops in Delhi (seven to eight were held last year in October, itself). The products (especially the teapots) went off the shelves almost as soon as we opened,” says Natasha. With more than 500 items across categories in furniture, home décor and accessories Bent Chair has something that will brighten up every corner of your home.
PRICE `6,000 to `70,000 (furniture), `3,000 onwards (teapots), `1,000 to `1,600 (cushions)
AT www.bentchair.com