Onyx acts as bridge and base, as weight and counterweight, in Indian architect-designer Rooshad Shroff’s new solo show, Balance. Spread across three galleries in IF.BE, Mumbai, India, the furniture design exhibition which ran from October 05 - 12, 2024, covered all manner of tables (side, dinner, coffee), consoles, a credenza, sofa, bar cabinet, mirror, chairs and carpets. With onyx in the lead, there were supporting acts from white bronze, brass, stainless steel, lapis lazuli, red mookaite, cashmere and cotton threads.

“I’ve been obsessed with marble for a long time,” said Shroff, during a walkthrough with STIR. “I love that it’s such a monolithic material and yet, we sculpt it like it’s butter in our studio. We get it to a thinness in which light can pass through. But, because we work on uber-luxury projects, I wanted to up the material palette. The primary stone in Balance is onyx, in white, green and pink. We've used metal casting for the first time. There's white bronze, which is probably the most premium metal for furniture. And, we have done upholstered pieces in 100 [per cent] cashmere. None of the pieces are lacquered here. We wanted them to age so that people understand what their metal is going to do…” he continued.

A Cornell-Harvard alumnus, Shroff set up his practice in Mumbai in 2011 with a multidisciplinary approach to design. This year alone, he has inlaid artist T Venkanna’s figures into Burmese teakwood for a furniture series; designed the statuesque Maskara Residence in Worli; and collaged the carnivalesque window displays for the Hermès showroom in Fort, one of his earliest clients. Balance, then, is a singular vision, which brings equipoise and a balletic grace to hearts of stone.

The design exhibition began with a side table in onyx, in shapes made from a protractor. A half-dinosaur egg rested on a full-dinosaur egg supported by a circular hinge, like an extravagant lagori (a traditional Indian game played with seven stones). “We had worked on this piece in 2021 for a project, but in marble with a coloured stone in the middle. The idea was to show these stones just resting on top of each other, the central point making it look unstable, but somehow finding the right centre of gravity. And then we forgot about it. We revisited it over the last two years and I thought it could grow into a collection,” Shroff elaborated.

We want our pieces to first stand for themselves and not be apologetic that because it's handmade, the piece is imbalanced or falling apart. Craft has allowed us to attain perfection. And, that's the quality we strive for. – Rooshad Shroff

It kept company with two other side tables, a coffee table and a console, with similarly precarious tipping points. “The first piece morphed into these different formations. It was a formal investigation, which kept pushing the limits of structure, like large cantilevers, as you see in the coffee table, or large overhangs with singular support, as in the console,” Shroff explained.

Separated by mounds of marble gravel, with floor mirrors, which act like water puddles to reflect the undersides of certain pieces, Shroff’s solo exhibition was landscaped like a meditative Zen garden. “We designed the scenography as if the works are presented in nature. A DJ helped us create a meditative soundscape with Tibetan bowls and gong sounds, interjected with sounds of running water,” he told STIR.

A large 8x10 dinner table, a sofa in a soft Gulmarg blue and carpets that took over 4,000 hours of work graced the second room of the exhibition space. “This is the first time we’ve presented upholstered pieces and carpets. I've done embroidery on every possible material now: wood, marble and brass. The carpets are similarly hand-embroidered. We turned cotton threads into handmade cotton cords and attached every cord onto a thick linen base with aari embroidery. The chairs and sofa are in white bronze, sand-casted and then upholstered in cashmere,” the Indian designer elaborated.

With production support from 2M Atelier (embroidery), DeMuro Das (upholstery) and Frozen Music (stones), Shroff went on to convey how for Balance, he partnered with people who possess the ‘know-how’ to realise these product designs. “Our process was to sketch them, make digital models, 3D-print them and finally make larger prototypes. We had to employ sophisticated engineering because of what we wanted the materials to do and what they could finally do. Onyx is also more fragile because of its vein structure and from the price perspective, it’s 10 times more expensive than marble. So, the amount of experimentation was also limited,” he adds.

The final room was graced by a credenza and a bar cabinet with a patinated stainless-steel exterior and brass-gold interior. “It's like your inner bling. None of the pieces are lacquered here. We wanted them to age, so that people understand what their metal is going to do and they don’t come in and say, ‘My piece has turned black’,” he said.

While craftsmanship has always been the nucleus of Shroff’s practice (artisans are credited alongside the design team), he relayed, “I've been working with craft since I started. But, I also think there's too much of a craft narrative happening now. Everybody seems to be hopping on to the craft story and craft-washing everything. We want our pieces to first stand for themselves and not be apologetic that because it's handmade, they are imbalanced or falling apart. Craft has allowed us to attain perfection. And, that's the quality we strive for.”

Rooshad Shroff’s ‘Balance’ was on view from October 05 - 12, 2024, at IF.BE in Mumbai, India.