For the last 20 years, British-Indian collector Rajan Bijlani has been painstakingly tracking down furniture from the city of Chandigarh, designed by a group of modernists, led by Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret. Located in the northern Indian state of Punjab, Chandigarh was conceived in 1947 (see W*147), when India and Pakistan partitioned and the British occupation ended. Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister, sought to fashion a modern and forward-thinking country by building a city from scratch, commissioning Le Corbusier and Jeanneret to design the masterplan, many of the city's main buildings and its furniture.
Crafted between 1954 and 1966 - primarily from teak and rosewood - the furniture is a unique fusion of Eastern and Western design, which Bijlani first started acquiring in 2004 in a collection that now amounts to around 500 pieces.
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