A commercial Art Deco design show inspires visitors to see symmetry in everyday things
Kunal Shah seen with Deco Flowers by de Gournay. Pic/Pradeep Dhivar
Interior architect Kunal Shah’s tryst with Art Deco began as a plaything before it moved into a more serious subject of enquiry. Having spent many guileless evenings as a child at his grandparents’ Breach Candy home, Sea Face Park, he remembers circling the round pillars, playing hide-and-seek in the verandah, and jumping from the red terrazzo flooring onto the yellow tiles, curious about how far he could leap. The memory of that lost time became more vivid as he started pursuing architecture and interior design. Spending a winter afternoon in the front yard of Kapur Mahal on Marine Drive, with his grand-aunt Kusum Shah, the daughter of the wealthy merchant Kapurchand who built the Art Deco structure, he learnt about the small joys of sipping on homemade sherbet made from starfruit grown in her courtyard.
ADVERTISEMENT
Shah later went on to pursue a design course in London, because of the certain disenchantment he felt with the architectural projects he was witnessing. Most of the houses he saw didn’t grow with people. “I started thinking about what styles and ways of living allow you to grow with your home, and the home to grow with you,” he recalls.
Art Deco trophy by Maharukh Desai
With a new commercial exhibition titled Art Deco on at gallery 47-A which Shah has curated, the memory of the striking patterns of the buildings he inhabited in the past, have come to life through the medium of art, architecture, woodwork, photography, jewellery and traditional weaves. “The problem is that we no longer think about Art Deco style in Bombay. We are obsessed with glass facade buildings. But it’s such an important part of our built heritage. The idea is to bring it back into our vocabulary.”
In a deliberate move, Shah takes the gaze away from Marine Drive and Oval Maidan, home to the UNESCO-protected Art Deco structures. The exhibition opens with a photograph by Hashim Badani taken from JJ Flyover, of a grey-blue building, which is also one of the handful Urdu-medium schools in the city today. “What I enjoyed doing most though is curating pictures of the [not-so-popular] buildings from Art Deco Mumbai’s archive,” he says. There are structures from Shivaji Park, Byculla, and as far as Kandivli.
The show also makes room for weaves by Hema Shoff Patel, inspired by Art Deco buildings. There’s geometric bespoke jewellery by Hanut Singh; Akshay Mahajan’s pictures and essay that reminisce about a time spent at Marine Drive’s Sea Green Hotel; Tanya James’ collection of Art Deco typography across languages; furniture by Camelot, and Vishwa Shroff’s study of floor tiles in Churchgate’s Queen’s Court.
“What is Art Deco really?” Shah asks, “It’s stylised, simplified motifs with some ornamentation, in perfect proportion and harmony. The human mind is always seeking that. I wanted to make it relevant to our times, and available for everybody.”
WHERE: 47-A, Khotachi Wadi
WHEN: Till November 13, 11 AM to 7 PM
Subscribe today by clicking the link and stay updated with the latest news!" Click here!
