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Sankheda Furniture: The Lacquered Teak of Gujarat

Turned on a lathe, painted in tin and sealed in lac, Sankheda's maroon-and-gold furniture has carried a Gujarat village's name around the world since the nineteenth century.

A village named after its lathe

Sankheda is a small town in eastern Gujarat, about 45 kilometres from Vadodara, on the bank of the river Orsang, and its furniture is named after it. The name itself comes from the Gujarati word sanghedu, meaning the lathe, the tool used to turn wood into cylindrical shapes. Lacquered turned-wood furniture with hand-painted motifs is thought to have been produced here from about 1855, and the craft is practised by about eighty to a hundred families of the Kharadi-Suthar community.

The deeper history is older and less certain. Lacquered teak furniture from this region was reported in the seventeenth century by the French writer George Rocques and the British civil servant James Forbes, who described teak brought from Valsad, painted in indigenous colours, and exported from the ports of Surat and Khambhat. Another strand is a legend, told to researchers by a 2015 study from MS University in Vadodara: some two hundred years ago the village carpenters were destitute when a holy man from the Aravalli Hills arrived seeking alms, and, realising they knew nothing but carpentry, taught them to make and use lacquer to enrich their furniture. Legend or not, the chronology agrees on the essentials: the craft took its modern form in the nineteenth century, and Sankheda has been its home ever since.

Materials: teak, lac and tin

The foundation of every Sankheda piece is teak, chosen for its strength, its fine grain and its resistance to the insects and damp that destroy lesser woods. In earlier times the teak came from Valsad; today artisans obtain it from the forests of Madhya Pradesh and the Maharashtra border areas, through government auctions. The second defining material is lac, also called shellac, a natural resin secreted by tiny crimson insects that live on certain trees, and collected from the forests around Chhota Udepur. The finest lac is light and golden, known as button lac, and it is both expensive and increasingly hard to procure.

The decoration rests on a third material: tinfoil, pounded with hot saras, a natural glue, until the two become a homogenous mass that dissolves in water. This is the paint with which the patterns are drawn. The remaining tools are simple and mostly natural: agate stone, called akik, for polishing; kevda, the fragrant screw-pine leaf, soaked overnight and used for the final finish; coconut husk for smoothing; and a brush made from the hair of a squirrel's tail for the finest lines. Chemical pigments have joined the palette in recent decades, but the tinfoil patterns under a transparent lacquer coat remain the basic traditional method, and the agate polish is still what gives the surface its depth.

The making, step by step

Making a Sankheda piece is a five-stage process, and a single item can take about a month to complete. It begins with the wood, cut to size and turned on a lathe. The lathe was traditionally powered by hand, with a bow and string, and the craftsman shaped the wood with chisels and gouges, achieving symmetric, even contours without measuring devices or markings. Electrically operated lathes arrived around 1973, increasing output. Once turned, the pieces are sanded, cracks are filled, and a coat of primer is applied and left to dry.

The decoration follows. A primer lightens the colour of the wood, and coconut husk smooths it further. Then comes kallai, also called harkalai: the tinfoil paint is applied with the squirrel-hair brush, drawing floral and geometric patterns while the piece turns slowly on the lathe. The painted motifs are then polished by rubbing with akik, the agate stone, which burnishes the tin and gives it its metallic gleam. Clear lac is applied next, worked in with the friction and heat produced by the lathe itself, and the lac gives the piece its glowing orange colour and its protective skin. Finally, the kevda leaf is used for the last finish and gloss.

Motifs and the language of the design

A Sankheda piece is recognisable at a glance: deep maroon and gold, with silver ornament, the turned wood gleaming under its lacquer skin. The traditional palette is maroon, gold, orange and brown, with designs in silver, and the motifs are floral and geometric, painted freehand in fine lines that follow the curves of the turned wood. Peacocks, flowers, leaves and lattice patterns recur, and the turning itself is part of the design. In recent years the palette has widened, with black, blue, green, ivory, copper and burgundy now offered alongside the classic maroon and gold. The range of objects has widened too, from swings, sofa sets, chairs, stools, dining tables and baby cradles to smaller turned pieces, but the defining combination has stayed constant: turned teak, tinfoil pattern, transparent lac, and the glow of hand polishing with agate.

The GI tag of 2007

Sankheda furniture was one of the earlier Indian handicrafts to receive legal protection. It was registered by the Controller General of Patents, Designs and Trademarks on 5 July 2007, under the title Sankheda Furniture, listed at GI Application number 100 under Class 20 as a handicraft item, and it is protected under the Geographical Indications of Goods (Registration and Protection) Act, 1999. The tag ties the name to the place and the method, and gives the artisan community a legal defence against imitation. That protection matters because the craft's reputation travels far beyond Gujarat: Sankheda furniture is sold in cities across India and exported to Europe and West Asia. The state has promoted it accordingly, with the Gujarat State Handloom and Handicrafts Development Corporation supporting artisans through exhibitions, fairs and training, and the furniture was showcased at the Vibrant Gujarat Regional Conference in Vadodara in June 2025.

How to tell an authentic piece

An authentic Sankheda piece can be recognised by its materials and its finish. It is made of real teak, so it is heavy, solid and close-grained, not the light, hollow feel of softwood or board. The decoration is hand-painted tinfoil under a transparent lacquer coat: look for the metallic gleam of the tin, the slight unevenness of a pattern drawn by hand on a turning lathe, and the deep, warm glow of the lacquer, polished with agate rather than sprayed with varnish. The classic colours are maroon and gold with silver ornament, and the turning should be symmetrical and smooth. Be cautious of pieces finished in melamine or synthetic varnish instead of lac, with printed or stencilled patterns instead of hand-painted tin, or made from pale wood stained to look like teak. A genuine piece should come with a maker's name or a GI indication, ideally from Sankheda itself.

Where the craft stands today

Sankheda today is a craft with recognition and a market, but with the familiar pressures of a hand tradition in a machine age. Its furniture is exported, exhibited at state conferences and bought for homes and hotels that want a piece of Gujarat's visual identity, and the Kharadi-Suthar families of Sankheda and nearby Chhota Udepur still practise it. Yet the inputs are under strain: good teak is bought at auction, lac is scarcer and more expensive than it was, and synthetic colours and melamine coatings have become common shortcuts. The craft's best defence is the thing that made it famous: the unmistakable combination of turned teak, tin and lac, which no factory finish quite reproduces.