Inside the Westminster collection: where the design language came from

The Westminster collection was the first signature line we put a name on, in 2006. It was less a deliberate design exercise than a recognition that we'd built the same set of pieces for several different clients in succession — and the pieces felt connected, like a family. We named the collection after the room style it kept ending up in: formal, considered, a little British in its proportions, but built for South Indian living.

The original brief

The pieces started as a commission for a Bengaluru architect's own home — three armchairs, a two-seat, and a long bench for the entry hall, all in solid French beech with hand-stitched leather and a single brass medallion on each arm. The architect wanted "club" furniture without the heaviness club furniture typically carries. He pushed us to keep the proportions tighter than we'd designed before — narrower arms, lower scrolls, a higher seat back, slightly less deep cushions.

The pieces were good. Quietly so — they didn't dominate the room, they sat with it. Two more clients saw them and asked for the same set. By the third commission we recognised we had a vocabulary, not just a one-off.

What's stayed

Twenty years on, the core spec is unchanged: French beech frame, hand-stitched art-leather or full-grain seat back, polished-brass medallion and tack detail, hand-rubbed satin polish on the wood. We've never moved off French beech for the frame — its grain, its strength, and its ability to take detailing without cracking are unmatched. We've experimented with walnut, with Burmese teak, with even painted-finish frames. The beech keeps winning.

The arm scroll is also unchanged. Most of the proportions have shifted by half a centimetre at most. The seat depth has stayed identical for two decades.

What's changed

The seat fill has changed three times. We started with feather-down, moved to spring-and-belt with a coir top in 2012 (more supportive, holds shape better), and added an optional hi-resilience foam core in 2019 for clients who want a firmer seat. All three are still available; most clients now choose the spring-and-belt as the default.

The hardware has moved with the brand. We added rose-gold detailing as an option in 2014; antique bronze in 2017. The original polished brass remains the most-ordered.

The fabric library has tripled. In 2006 we offered six fabrics; today the Westminster collection alone has sixty-plus options across art-leather, full-grain leather, mulberry silk, hand-loom cotton, and a small range of wool blends.

What we've dropped

We removed deep-button-tufting from the standard spec around 2013. It's still available on request, but we found that the patterns clients liked in photographs rarely held up in real rooms — the buttons collected dust, the tufts compressed unevenly over time, and the maintenance overhead wasn't worth the visual.

We also dropped the "matched-set" pricing model. Until 2017 we sold Westminster pieces only as full living-room sets. Now they're available individually because most clients want one or two pieces to anchor a mixed room, not a uniform suite.

We are not so much designing the next Westminster as listening to the room and trimming what doesn't fit.

What's coming

We're prototyping a Westminster recliner this year — same frame language, same scroll, but with a manual pitch mechanism inspired by the Richard collection. It's been requested often enough that the brief writes itself. We expect it to enter production in late 2026 if the prototype clears the workshop's tests.

Beyond that, we don't see the collection changing dramatically. The voice the architect set in 2006 still works. Our job is to keep the spec available, in the materials of the moment, to the clients who care about that exact register.

Browse the current Westminster line on the products page, or visit our Bengaluru studio to see the swatches and commission a piece.