The Hindu Business Line : Colours of wood

The train stopped for me at Mysore,” says Eric Sakellaropoulos, a man who has given Mysore’s traditional wood inlay — intarsia or marquetry — its entrée into gracious homes around the world.

Eric, as the Mysoreans call him, has made this heritage city his home for the past 10 years, mainly because of the rich legacy of craftsmanship and the availability of coloured wood in this area. This 44-year-old of mixed Greek and French descent says the Mysore region has over 35 types of trees with wood of the most unexpected colours.

The main reason why the craft has survived in this area is because of the extraordinary character of the raw material available here, he says.

Eric uses the coloured wood on a background of dark-brown or black wood in a variety of designs on tables, cabinets and flooring. He has used Indian motifs and patterns with western design sensibilities.

The dark-brown or black wood comes from rosewood sourced from coffee estates in Coorg. The tones of grey, beige and blue, which are used extensively in Eric’s work, are from a ‘magical’ tree called the slate matty. This tree gets a fungus infection under the bark that stains the wood blue and grey. Most of his slate matty has been rescued from firewood depots in the city, he said. Talking about the other colours, Eric says even the prosaic tamarind and the guava contribute to the colour palette.

Inlay work is the art of cutting different coloured wood and then inserting or joining them to create designs. This art has been practised in different parts of the world since ancient times. In Mysore, the art evolved because of the patronage of the Mysore royal family.

The art from different parts of the world evolved according to the availability of the raw material and the aesthetic tastes of the local patrons. Eric points out that during the Renaissance, intarsia reached heights and was known as painting in wood. The artisans were able to create floral designs, landscapes and portraits.

In those days the cutting techniques were simple. Wooden slabs of 3-4 mm thickness were individually hand-cut using U-saws and chisels.

Each piece would then be carefully placed according to the wood grain and colour. Mechanised cutting, which started in France during the late-18th century, changed the way inlay work was done. Veneers could be cut much thinner — about 1-1.5 mm in thickness, these could be stacked together, bonded like plywood and then cut using mechanised jigsaws all at once. The new technique boosted productivity but creativity took a beating.

Eric started in a small way. He would take a train to Mumbai and then make the rounds of the architects’ offices with his samples in his knapsack. Slowly, orders started flowing in. Exhibitions in New York and Montreal as well as a network of old contacts resulted in export orders.

Today, he caters not just to India’s rich and famous but to clients all over the world. Many of whom find their way to Eric’s home (a typical Mysore house with a Paledeo façade) with orders for more customised work, which ranges from flooring to curved-top writing tables, wine cabinets and pagoda tables.

The pricing of these products are in the premium category. For instance a small coffee table is priced at about Rs 60,000.

For the flooring, the wood used is double the thickness of the material used for cabinets or tables and is reinforced with marine ply to make it waterproof.

The wood is treated so that high heels do not mark the floor. The flooring is priced between Rs 3,000 and Rs 6,000 per sq ft.

The domestic market has kept Eric and his craftspersons busy. The booming economy has resulted in hundreds of millionaires all over India whose homes are lifestyle statements. “India is the only place in the world where palaces are still being built,” Eric says.

As for the famous Mysore palace itself, he says the unique intarsia work found there is a blend of local flavours and Persian influences brought in by the Iranian craftsmen who worked on the palace. With royal patronage the art flourished all over India. New ideas, skills and designs flowed in along with the foreign craftsmen. (Eric says much of the marquetry on the Taj Mahal was the handiwork of Florentine craftsmen.) In the last 50 years, artwork and design sensibilities have degenerated.

“Most of today’s nouveau riche have very little taste or knowledge of art and the craftsman no longer works with someone who has formal training in art,” he says.

Local customers look for volume and size, not quality, he says, resulting in mass produced work with little or no handicraft in it. So much so, much of the container loads of handicraft shipped to Germany, the US and Japan have found their way into the basement bargain shops, he adds.

The need of the hour is to remedy this and to give the craftspeople in Mysore a fighting chance in the global market. His dream is to set up a good design school to make craftsmen aware of Western design sensibilities.