Royal Society looks to India

Great Britain's Royal Society of Arts is a premier club where the cream of designers and artists gather to spearhead a place for design in a country where a revolution three decades ago changed the way the world looks at British design.

And in what he hopes will be a similar fallout, Mike Knowles of India Chic, a furniture design and export company based in New Delhi, is planning to start a chapter of the Royal Society in India.

Knowles has been in the business with wife Preeti long enough to recognise that the furniture industry in the country, despite great skill and capability, requires a great boost if it is to count for anything. "China has a flourishing industry," he says, "so why not India?"

The success of British design -- considered "terrible till the seventies" -- is what Knowles hopes to emulate with the start of the Royal Society of Arts in India some time this year.

This, he feels, could create a successful furniture and design industry employing thousands of people. "It's a huge business," he estimates, "and there's big money and major room for employment within it. What's more, all it would require for a turnaround is as little as three years."

He's still talking to the prestigious Society based in London. If a chapter should come to India this year, then Knowles hopes to showcase a collection of 10 of Britain's leading designers and upholsterers -- among them Danny Lame and Ed Tuttle -- in an exhibition in April 2005.

"Each of the participating designers will work on designs that will be made here in India," he says, adding, "Our hand-crafted work is our major strength. We can patent designs within a week, something that would cost far more and take much longer in the West."

With the Royal Society of Arts chapter in India, Knowles sees it as a valid instrument of accreditation, while also hoping to create job opportunities in an industry.

In fact, it is the social fallout of job creation that is instilling the confidence in Knowles to go out on a limb when it comes to bringing the Royal Society to India.