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Home > News > India News > Article > Time travel on a four poster bed

Time travel on a four-poster bed

Updated on: 25 February,2010 10:11 AM IST  | 
Anjana Vaswani |

Phillips, a quaint Mumbai landmark has been in the antiques business for 150 years. The shop that once sold leather goods and perfume to the Brits, is now hosting an exhibition of antique furniture and curios with a history

Time travel on a four-poster bed

Phillips, a quaint Mumbai landmark has been in the antiques business for 150 years. The shop that once sold leather goods and perfume to the Brits, is now hosting an exhibition of antique furniture and curios with a history


"Every piece in this exhibition and at our Colaba store, has history. We try to trace its origin as far back as possible," says Farooq Issa, whose great-grandfather bought Phillips back in the 1920s from the Englishman after whom the store is named. Issa's spanking white Apple iBook seems out of place in an office surrounded by stunning pieces of what Issa calls "old furniture". Iridescent stained-glass doors lead into thisu00a0 office and while Issa says that they may be featured in a soon-to-be-released coffee-table book, he's not too sure about their origin. "Those doors have been here ever since I was a child. They are old, not sure if they are antique. To qualify as an antique, a piece must be certifiably at least 100 years old," he explains, pointing out that their upcoming exhibition will showcase both antique and old pieces.



If you are thinking that's just another way to say all exhibits will be exorbitant, you are wrong, says Issa. "We have a wide range of furniture. The price is determined by several factors including size, age, rarity, wood used (ebony, for example is the most expensive), condition of the piece and the provenance or the story attached.

Art Deco pieces will be economical, for instance." Offering the example of an impeccably restored teak chest priced at Rs 20,000, Issa says, "People think you get the best deal at local bazaars; this isn't true. While the price may be marginally lower, bazaar-dealers rarely know how to preserve a piece's patinau00a0-- that's the build-up of wax and polish, all of which marks the authenticity of the piece, and is hence crucial to its value. Nor can bazaar-shoppers be assured that the fittings on their purchase are original."u00a0

That little piece of paper that reveals the origin of what you're buying is probably the best part of antique-shopping. The one attached to an Anglo-Indian four-poster-bed is marked with the letters "WWX Entally." "Entally was one of the 38 villages bought by the British East India Company, in 1717," it reads, and, "While the significance of WWX hasn't been ascertained, Entally is a neighbourhood in central Calcutta." Isn't it the kind of bed Nancy Drew would dream about? The exhibition will also showcase smaller pieces such as writing boxes, carved panels and game-boards. Weu00a0 loved the range of Konkan masks (Rs 15,000 onwards), some of which draw from mythological themes.

At: Coomaraswamy Hall, Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya, Fort. February 25 to March 2, 10 am to 7pm.
Call: 22885115u00a0 / 9820025937



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