art nouveau re imagined by HG from india

This dining table is the center piece of a set of dining furniture designed for and constructed by The Great Eastern Home (a furniture and lifestyle store in Mumbai, India). It is the result of a re-imagination of the Art Nouveau style in an Indian context. Art nouveau is an art movement or style which took place between 1890 and 1914 in Europe. It was a romantic movement which celebrated the hand work of craftsmen as well as the beauty and structure of the natural world and the wonder of its flora and fauna. But its spread was limited to Europe and its end was brought about by the advent of mechanised production methods.
This project was an attempt to imagine what the result might be had Art Nouveau survived to present day and had it been practised in India, using Indian symbols, plants, mythology, icons etc as inspiration.
Throughout the lengths and breadths of the vast and culturally diverse nation that is India, the Banyan tree is a constant in all mythology and all cultures. It has also been chosen as the national tree of The Republic of India. Hence this icon of Indian-ness was chosen as the inspiration for this set of furniture and particularly this table. The table's structure and form have been obtained by the stylisation and simplification of the image of a banyan tree. Also, in the true spirit of Art Nouveau, barring basic cutting processes the rest of the construction of the piece was done by hand, by skilled craftsmen- a breed that is slowly dying out in India.