The Chandigarh chair is believed to have been designed by Pierre Jeanneret, Eulie Chowdhury, and unknown Indian designers, in the 1950s for use in the public buildings of the new city of Chandigarh, which was being constructed to the designs of Jeanneret's cousin, the architect Le Corbusier (who was invited by the Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru to create a city for a newly-independent India).[1]
Victoria and Albert Museum has called the chair "a 20th-century design classic – much revered, reproduced and replicated".[2]
Authorship question
The chairs are sometimes referred to as 'Jeanneret chairs' by auction houses, which overlooks the role of Eulie Chowdhury (and possibly others) in their creation.[3][4] There is no definitive evidence regarding the true designer of the chair as the workshop set up to design all the furniture worked in a collaborative way, and authorship was not documented.[5]
A Chandigarh-based architect was quoted in The Tribune: "...the Indian architects were apparently not as keen on claiming authorship. As a result, their work continues to be overshadowed by the Western architects who worked here."[4] In The Wall Street Journal, Jeanneret expert Maristella Casciato stated that Eulie was “managing” the furniture production and that "she was extremely important in creating that network and supporting the production and all the detailing.”[6]
Renewed interest in the late 1990s
For most of their history in the Indian context, the chairs merely served a functional purpose. Their design value has only been recognized since the late-1990s when European dealers arrived in Chandigarh, started buying them in bulk after they were "thrown out" by the government and "sold for peanuts".[7] These chairs were taken to the West, restored, exhibited, gained a cult following, and were sold at auctions for significant sums.[8]
Recent scholarship on the chairs has pointed out several issues associated with their history: overlooking the role of Indian designers in the workshop to play up the 'Jeanneret-Corbusier' connection, in order to fetch higher prices in the Western auction houses; their procurement at extremely low rates by European dealers who knew more than their Indian counterparts; and appropriation of the out-of-copyright design by global studios and erasing their historical context during the sale.[9][10]
Current production
There are no exclusive licenses for the production of Chandigarh chair as Jeanneret "never filed for copyrights".[11] As their popularity have grown in the 21st-century, multiple studios across the world have produced their own versions.[6]
↑Codignola-Bo, Federica (March 20, 2025). The Symbolic Power of Collectible Design: Mapping a Multifaceted Field. Ethics International Press. p.145. ISBN9781804416518. p.145:...there has clearly been a focus in design in building a narrative and shifting the focus from these being 'Chandigarh chairs' to 'Jeanneret chairs'...thereby creating a new market.
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