The chair is so ubiquitous—you don’t even realise when you are sitting on one. You are using the chair unconsciously, and don’t pay attention to it—unless you are buying one, of course,” says Vrunda Pathare, head of Godrej Archives. Perhaps that’s the reason why Pathare and her team have decided to publish a whole book about the indispensible piece of furniture. From the Frugal to the Ornate is written by graphic artist and designer Sarita Sundar. 

“In 2009, when the typewriter factory was shutting down, we had decided to celebrate that object, which has a public recall. It was a people-centric object. Object histories are not undertaken in India; and as an archive, we want to cover different kinds of histories to raise awareness. We were already contemplating another object to explore after the typewriter and coincidentally, when Sarita mentioned her research on chair in 2017, we were like ‘Why not?’,” says Pathare.