This carpentry workshop in Alibaug is every designer’s favourite

When we interview Punaram (as he is known to everyone) at his workshop for this Way We Make series and ask him to introduce himself for our video, he says to the camera “…main Alibaug mein carpentry ka kaam kar raha hu”. Recording him against the backdrop of his 22,000 sq ft workshop, with 150 odd employees on his roster and some of India’s biggest architects and interior designers as clients, you can’t help but smile when he says this. Especially when one is used to the world of social media with everyone on it announcing the tiniest wins or moments of validation, it’s hard to tell if he is being humble or matter of fact. I put it down to habit—born into the Suthar community, the families of carpenters in Rajasthan, “carpenter” is how he has described himself since he was 14 and started working with his father.

From Home and Community

And for a few years it was the story of any young craftsman from India learning and going along wherever the work took him. “I was always interested in woodwork, I didn’t even want to finish my schooling. The first time I went to Delhi was with my brother to work on a project. Then we also went to Baroda, Bangalore, Mumbai…,” he says. Until his encounter with Bijoy Jain on a project in Alibaug that brought him to his next chapter. With Bijoy’s uncompromising reverence to material and detailing and Punaram’s focus on learning and perfection it was a match made in heaven, which set him up for his journey from a carpenter to a successful design entrepreneur.

Punaram didn’t come with a printed CV, Bijoy discovered every small skill of his day-by-day while at work, and usually those came as a surprise. Like the time Punaram made a model of a staircase that the team was working on for a project. “Bijoy sir called me and asked me how I made it. Then he said going forward I should make models for entire homes that we were working on,” he says. Punaram used Burma Teak to make the model for Jain’s project in Alibaug, the beautiful Palmira House. Another time on a project Punaram made a sketch and showed Jain. “He called everyone on his team and showed it to them – dekho yeh toh anpadh hai phir bhi aisa sketch banaya,” smiles Punaram. “I used to enjoy making sketches, when I left Bijoy sir there were 18 books of mine in his office,” he says.

“His notebooks are something to see. His drawings are quite beautiful, I am always struck by how well articulated and simple they are,” Manju Sara Rajan adds. The editor of this magazine has been following his work for many years and has even worked with him on personal projects. “The thing that strikes me the most about him is that he is a problem solver, he can work out something that is both a design solution and a practical solution. He is really a designer as well,” she says. It’s no surprise then that designers that work with him call it a collaboration.