Wood.
Wood01 / 05
Step 1 of 5
Aale mara.
Start with the material.
Ivory wood. Soft, pale, close-grained, and it takes colour beautifully. Seasoned before shaping.
- Before
- Seasoned wood
- After
- A material ready to shape
Serious hands.
Unserious ideas.
A joke starts the conversation.
The craft makes it worth keeping.
We make funny, contemporary objects with India’s traditional handcrafts. Collection 01 starts with Channapatna: turned wood, lac colour, and hands that know what they’re doing.
See what goes into it
The hands do the thinking.
Shaping wood on a lathe.
From a piece of wood
to your kind of weird.
The Channapatna way, in five steps and one leaf.
Choose a step. See what goes into it.
Cut.
Cut02 / 05
Step 2 of 5
Cut to size.
A useful beginning.
The wood is sawn into blanks, roughly the shape of what it will become. A whole piece can need more than one part.
- Before
- A piece of wood
- After
- Blanks for each part
Turn.
Turn03 / 05
Step 3 of 5
On the lathe.
The hands do the thinking.
The blank spins. The chisel leans in. The maker shapes the piece, knowing where to cut and when to stop.
- Before
- An unshaped blank
- After
- The form of the piece
Colour.
Colour04 / 05
Step 4 of 5
Lac, while it spins.
Spin before shipping.
A stick of lac is pressed against the turning wood. Friction melts the colour on. Lettering and small details are separate work.
- Before
- Turned wood
- After
- Lac colour on the surface
Polish.
Polish05 / 05
Step 5 of 5
One leaf. That shine.
A little polish. A lot of patience.
Buffed with a leaf until it shines. We’ll confirm the leaf used for our pieces with the maker. Some designs also need bench work and assembly.
- Before
- A coloured surface
- After
- A polished finish
Colour on turned wood.
The material
gets a say.
We bring the idea.
The wood brings its own opinion.
- The form.The lathe likes round things. We design around what the maker and the material do well.
- The colour.Lac has its own palette. We work with it.
- The little differences.Grain, colour and finish vary. Handwork leaves a little evidence.
There’s a person
behind the polish.
Our rule: name the workshop on the made-by card once it is confirmed. Agree rates up front and pay on time. Craft can keep going when the people doing it can afford to keep doing it.
If you want to know more about where your Gubbi came from, ask. We’ll tell you.
Ask us about the makingMade by hand.
Workshop name to follow.
- Collection
- Collection 01: Peak Bengaluru
- Where
- Channapatna, Karnataka
- Wood
- Aale mara / ivory wood
- Colour
- Natural lac
- Finish
- Leaf polish
Hand-turned. Yours is a little different.
That’s the point.
NEST BOX.
BUILT IN.One Gubbi sold. One box up.
BUILT IN.One Gubbi sold. One box up.
One little object.
One little home.
Our commitment: every Gubbi sold puts up one sparrow nest box in Bengaluru. It is built into the price. We’ll publish the count and the partner as the boxes go up, with numbers we can stand behind.
Why the sparrow, anyway?Old hands.
Your kind of joke.
Collection 01 is where we start. Other Indian handcrafts follow. Same care, new conversations.