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METROSCAPE
Bowrings' Blues
Art lovers and pretenders
fought for space and seats at Bowrings' debut auction at Delhi's The Oberoi.
But not so much for the works.
Over 60 per cent of the offerings, an unexplosive
mix of contemporary Indian art, old photographs and colonial or princely
bric-a-brac like Belgian chandeliers, sheet silver beds, porcelain and
cutlery, remained unsold. The few snatches of good news: Painter Hemen
Mazumdar's 1936 study of his wife went above its estimate of Rs 16 lakh
to sell at Rs 18 lakh.
An album of caricatures on the Round Table Conference
of 1930 (estimate: Rs 55,000) sold at Rs 3.2 lakh. For the rest, officials
at Bowrings, a wholly Indian auction house set up by ex-Sotheby's man
Patrick Bowring with The Oberoi, put it down to Delhiites being "generally
cautious bidders". Maybe they just didn't like what they saw.
-Anshul Avijit
Wooden Statement
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| TEAK TALES: The interiors of the E-Citi
office in Mumbai |
For close to a century, these teak beams anchored
Mumbai's massive suburban railway network, bearing the weight of thousands
of trains. Until the Railways decided to replace them with sturdier concrete
sleepers a decade ago. Years after being uprooted, they lay abandoned
beside railtracks. Until recently. Interior designers are now using these
rugged beams of the colour of burnt chocolate to craft fashion statements
for homes and corporate offices.
 Entire
sections of multiplex makers E-Citi Entertainment's Mumbai office are
made of these sleepers, complete with sarkari markings. The only alteration:
a coat of thick varnish. These 9-ft-long beams make up sections of Pune's
newest private club The Corinthian, the interiors of corporates Mahindra
British Telecom and Wipro in Pune, posh south Mumbai residences and the
usual farmhouses. "They're refreshingly elegant and convey character
and solidity," says architect Amala Sheth. Besides, timber merchants
snap up the sleepers at railway auctions for around Rs 1,000 apiece, less
than a fourth the cost of teak. But no, that still doesn't make them cheap
-Sandeep Unnithan
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