: Personal history: My grandfather and the humble backstory of a Jeanneret chair from Chandigarh #IndiaNEWS On my commute, biking through Amsterdam’s Spiegelkwartier – jewellery atelier, antiques

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Personal history: My grandfather and the humble backstory of a Jeanneret chair from Chandigarh #IndiaNEWS
On my commute, biking through Amsterdam’s Spiegelkwartier – jewellery atelier, antiques dealer, curios shop – I skid to a halt. Through an art gallery window is the chair my grandfather sat in.Where once he sat, his hand pinching a beedi, there is nothing. The man was removed. The object was vacated. And so elevated into art.For this is a Pierre Jeanneret chair. The Swiss architect, in the 1950s and 60s, oversaw its conception and construction in India. After Partition in 1947, Punjab’s capital, Lahore, was in Pakistan. Hence the need for a regional capital, and to showcase India’s modernity. With his cousin, Le Corbusier, Jeanneret helped shepherd Chandigarh into existence.Jeanneret was collaborative, his design process distributed. The contrast, with his cousin, was both temperamental and political. During the Second World War, Le Corbusier eagerly cultivated France’s pro-Nazi Vichy regime. Jeanneret joined the French resistance.Le Corbusier dealt with Chandigarh at arm’s length, sending diktats from abroad. Jeanneret lived there for a decade-and-a-half, mediating turf battles between engineers, officials, and workers. Le Corbusier idealised the abstract and the build. Jeanneret was immersed in the indefinite activity of building.As the city’s modernist façade neared completion, Jeanneret turned his attention to interiors. Chandigarh was to be an administrative, scientific,...Read more

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