‘Tambuti’ Singh
parents were dairy, fruit and vegetable farmers who used to deliver their goods with a horse and cart.”
The family lived on land belonging to Singh’s grandparents, Karan and Parvathy Singh, on Chiltern Drive in Westville. “The University of Durban Westville now stands there,” he said.
While he won all the woodwork exhibitions at school, Singh aspired to be a teacher or an attorney. His father told him not to waste his time with the former and, as for being an attorney: “You are too intelligent and will bring criminals from prisons on to the streets!”
Instead, his father ordered him to stay with him in the factory, where he would teach him “the art of making fine furniture with love and dedication.” A further lure was that by doing so he would meet great people throughout the world.
“I admired my mother, who stood beside my father and worked shoulder to shoulder with him. She was the finest French polisher in the country. My parents brought out the greatest talent in me – my skilled woodwork,” he said.
The first piece of furniture Singh made, together with his father, was a lounge suite for the head of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, which today is on display at South Africa House in London.
Turning back the hands of the clock even further, Singh told of how his father came into the furniture business. “When my parents married, my father worked for my mother’s father, in his factory in Parliament Road, for about 10 years. In 1939 he opened his own factory in Westville and bought his first machines with his savings.”
In those days his father