Ahmedabad: After yearlong research on the indigenous vernacular furniture of North-West India, Cept University's Design Innovation and Craft Resource Centre (DICRC) has discovered the provenance of the social and cultural diversity around these regions. While most of these antique pieces of woodwork have degraded over time, some are still in use in houses.

"The traditional and vernacular architecture of hand-crafted furniture like this is rarely documented in books," said Mitraja Vyas, a senior researcher at DICRC, Cept. "This is a first-of-its-kind research."

Most of this furniture had been hand-crafted by locals and reflects a lot about the region's architecture and history. The group retrieved three antique pieces of vernacular furniture - a "pitara", an ornate chest used for storage and while travelling, a "dhaliyo", or a merchant's desk, and a cloth-stitched low chair.

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The project was in collaboration with and funded by the UK-based South Asian Decorative Arts and Crafts Collection (SADACC) Trust. While Phase One of the project was based in Gujarat, the subsequent phases will cover Rajasthan and Punjab.