The top of a Vaanam table, straight down, before the first coat of oil. Raking light from the left.
Solid teak, laurel, oak and mango · Made to order in Karaikudi · Ten to fourteen weeks · Delivered to Chennai and Bengaluru
Pictured — the top of a Vaanam table in Indian laurel, smoked oil. Three boards, book-matched, 2400 × 1000 × 30 mm.
Made — in a former rice mill on Kandanur Road, Karaikudi, by six makers who each build a piece from the first board to the last coat of oil.
Delivered — to Chennai in two days and Bengaluru in four, in our own van, with the drawing in the drawer. Ten to fourteen weeks from the signed drawing.
Everything is made to the size you need. The prices are for the timber and size shown; the credenza page shows how they change.
Photograph: the Vaanam table from a low three-quarter angle in a whitewashed room, morning light from the left. Eight Kombu chairs, two pulled out. Nothing on the table.
Photograph: the Manai credenza straight on against a lime-plaster wall, one door ajar to show the shelf. A single brass bowl on top, off-centre.
Photograph: two Kombu chairs back to back on a concrete floor, the cane weave in focus, the room soft behind.
Photograph: the Kattil bed from the foot, white linen, the mango headboard with its mineral streaks running vertically. Window light, no props.
Photograph: the long bench room at 7 am, shutters half open, one maker planing a teak board with the shavings piling to the left. The other five benches empty and swept. Wide, from the doorway.
Forge & Oak was started in 2011 by S. Meenakshi Sundaram, who had spent eleven years making furniture for hotels, and Aarthi Krishnan, who had spent eight designing it. They bought a rice mill outside Karaikudi because it had a roof high enough to stack timber under and a floor that did not move.
The workshop still buys timber as boards, never as blanks, and dries them under that roof for at least fourteen months before anything is cut. One maker builds each piece from start to finish, and signs the inside of a drawer or the underside of a top. There are no assemblers, and nothing is sent out.
Every piece is offered in all four, except the Kombu chair, which we make only in oak and laurel. The swatches are drawn from the same recipe as the boards above them.
Our rosewood alternative. Dark, straight-grained, takes a smoked oil to near black.
Golden, oily, moves least of anything we cut. The timber the region has always built with.
Pale and open-pored, with silver ray figure on quarter-sawn boards. Best under soap or raw oil.
Blond with dark mineral streaks. The lightest of our timbers and the least expensive.
Twelve weeks is usual. Fourteen if a board surprises us during the dry-fit, and it is always the board's fault.
A piece, a size, a timber and a finish, here or at the workshop. We take a 30% deposit and pick your boards from stock that week.
Ramesh draws your piece at 1:10 with every dimension in millimetres. You sign it, or we change it. Nothing is cut before you sign.
One maker builds the whole piece. We send two photographs, at the dry-fit and after glue-up, and nothing else.
Three coats of oil, ten days apart. Then our van, or a crate to the transporter, with the drawing in the drawer.
Tuesday to Saturday, 10 am to 6 pm. Karaikudi is five hours from Chennai by road and forty minutes from Tiruchirappalli airport. We will show you the timber stack, the bench room and whatever is on the finishing racks.
Or call +91 4565 238 110. If Karaikudi is too far, the Manai credenza and two Kombu chairs are on the second floor of Amethyst, Whites Road, Chennai, until October.