Thursday 12 / December / 2024
Here distressed jeans become upholstery for a chair. Mid-century shaped, industrial chic lounges are made from goat hide. Marble cutwork cubes make a modern mosaic on a wrought-iron table, while leather covered bar chairs come with riding stirrups. Tables are topped with railway sleeper cabs and up-cycled Almirah and mango wood crates become a set of drawers. Rustic wood abounds.
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“We are perhaps the one and only outlet here in Oman that promotes authentic ethnic furniture and furnishings,” said Vivek Thusu, the showroom manager at four-month-old Ethnic Homes.
The shop’s mixture of ethno-modern up-cycled, reclaimed, industrial, and restored furnishings, make a walk through the showroom feel like an exotic, surreal adventure into a treasure trove of well crafted, stunning pieces of home décor.
“Each piece that you see here has its own character, be it the discolouration or the uneven edges of the furniture,” Vivek explained. “Upcycling, in a layman’s language, would be taking something and make something else out of it. We also do a lot of reclaimed furniture where we buy old and used furniture and take the pieces to make a completely different product.”
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People nowadays seem to be gradually gravitating towards old, traditional furniture and reclaimed woods, for designs that speak to their nostalgia and that are also functional, unique, and environmentally sustainable. From a production standpoint, using reclaimed wood that has been salvaged and sourced from auctions, benefits both the furniture manufacturer and the end customer, thanks to the fact that the materials themselves are more durable and stronger than the cheap composite woods used to make much of the furniture produced today.
As much art as it is functional furniture, the pieces at Ethnic Homes are one-of-a-kind odes to the many ways in which discarded materials can be recycled or upcycled into something beautiful. A table constructed entirely out of discarded Indian railways tracks looks as though it should be in a modern art museum. Plush sofas made using Ambassador cars, the former pride of the Indian roads, look Dali-esque. A bar counter made out of a scraped army vehicle looks like a post-industrial statement. My favourite “work” was an ancient door that had been re-framed like a museum-piece and transformed into an elegant dining table.
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The men behind Ethnic Homes have brilliantly found a way to do business in a sustainable, eco-friendly way, creating something hip and modern out of traditional pieces and otherwise forgotten relics of the industrial age.
“A distressed and antique piece of furniture can add a unique charm to any room and can turn furniture into heirloom-quality treasures,” Vivek said.
He’s right. The resulting furniture would make an artful addition to contemporary and traditional homes alike. They are timeless because they are real, crafted from history into little feasts for the eyes.
