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The Design Handbook
Before the carving is chosen, before the finish and the upholstery, there is a quieter decision that determines almost everything about how a piece of furniture will age: what it is made from.
It is also the decision buyers are given the least help with. Showroom labels say wooden, or wood finish, or name a timber without saying which parts of the piece it appears in. This guide is what we would tell a client standing in front of two beds that look alike and cost very differently.
Most furniture sold in India is not solid hardwood. It is engineered board — plywood, MDF or particle board — with a thin veneer or a printed laminate on the surface. That is not automatically bad; good plywood is stable and appropriate for fitted wardrobes and kitchen carcasses. But it is a different product with a different lifespan, and it should be priced as one.
The distinction that matters:
A simple test in a showroom: look at the edges and the underside. On solid timber the grain runs continuously around an edge and the hidden surfaces look like the visible ones. On a veneered board the edge is banded, and the underside often is not the same material.
Teak has been the timber of the Kerala house for centuries, and the reason is chemistry rather than fashion. Its natural oils and silica content make it unusually resistant to water, rot and insect attack — the three things that destroy furniture in a coastal, monsoon climate.
It is dimensionally stable, which means it moves less than most timbers as humidity rises and falls. It holds a joint. It takes a hand-rubbed finish beautifully and darkens into a deep honey colour with age rather than looking tired. It is also heavy, slow-growing and expensive, and those things are related.
Where the confusion is: “teak” covers a wide range. Old-growth Burma teak, Indian plantation teak and fast-grown African or Latin American plantation teak differ considerably in density, oil content and grain. Ask which one, and ask where it was grown. A seller who does not know is telling you something.
Best for: beds, dining tables, anything that will be in a humid room, and anything intended to outlive its first owner.
Indian rosewood has a dark, dramatic figure and a density that makes it superb for carving and for fine joinery. It is genuinely one of the world's great furniture timbers.
Two cautions. First, the word is used loosely: much of what is sold in India as rosewood is sheesham, a related but distinct and lighter timber, and some of it is neither. Second, several true rosewood species are subject to international trade restrictions, so provenance and documentation matter — particularly if a piece may one day be shipped abroad. Buy from someone who can tell you the species and the source.
Best for: carved pieces, small fine furniture, statement items where the figure of the grain is the point.
Mahogany is the timber of English and American cabinetmaking at its height — stable, fine-grained, straightforward to work, and it takes a polish as well as anything. Most mahogany in the Indian market is imported, and a number of unrelated timbers are sold under the name.
It is a fine choice for period forms where the original would have been mahogany. In a Kerala climate it is less naturally resistant than teak and depends more on its finish and on sensible placement.
Best for: Regency and colonial forms, interior pieces in controlled rooms.
Mango and acacia have become common in exported Indian furniture, and there are honest reasons for that: they grow quickly, they are far cheaper, and mango in particular is often a by-product of orchards past fruiting age, which makes it defensible environmentally.
They are real solid hardwoods and they are not a trick. But they are softer, more prone to movement, and more susceptible to borer than teak. In a humid coastal home they need more protection and they will not take the same number of restorations. They are a sensible choice for pieces you expect to own for ten or fifteen years, and the wrong choice for a piece you expect to hand on.
A timber that performs well in Delhi may not in Kochi. Coastal Kerala combines sustained high humidity for months with sharp drying in air-conditioned rooms, and it has an active insect population. That environment rewards oily, dense, naturally durable timbers and punishes everything else.
It is the single strongest argument for teak in this part of the country, and the reason traditional Kerala houses used it for everything from roof structure to the seat of an oonjal.
Here is the thing most buyers never ask, and it matters more than the choice between two good timbers.
Freshly sawn timber holds a great deal of moisture. If it is built into furniture before that moisture has been brought down and stabilised, the piece will dry out in your home — and it will shrink, twist, open its joints and split its panels while doing so. No species is immune. The finest teak, used green, will still fail.
Kiln-drying brings timber to a stable moisture content in controlled conditions before it is ever cut into a joint. It is slow, it costs money, it is invisible in the finished piece, and it is the difference between furniture that settles quietly into a house and furniture that comes apart in its third monsoon. Every piece Temple Town makes is built from kiln-dried teak for exactly this reason.
Ask the question. Is the timber kiln-dried? The answer, and the confidence with which it is given, will tell you most of what you need to know about a maker.
For a piece intended to last generations in a South Indian home, kiln-dried teak with cut joinery is the most defensible choice available, and has been for three hundred years. Rosewood is the connoisseur's timber for carved and fine work, with provenance checked. Mahogany suits period forms in controlled rooms. Mango and acacia are honest, affordable timbers for furniture with a shorter horizon.
The mistake is not choosing a cheaper timber. It is paying heirloom prices for one.
For humid coastal regions such as Kerala, kiln-dried teak is generally the best choice: its natural oils resist moisture, rot and insects, and it is stable enough to hold joinery for generations. Rosewood is excellent for carved and fine work. Mango and acacia are cheaper solid hardwoods suited to shorter-lifespan furniture.
They are good at different things. Teak is more durable in humid and coastal conditions and more stable over time. Rosewood is denser and takes fine carving better, which makes it the traditional choice for ornate work.
Kiln-drying reduces the timber's moisture content to a stable level under controlled conditions before it is cut into joinery. It matters more than the choice of species: undried timber shrinks and twists inside the finished piece, opening joints and splitting panels.
No. Sheesham is a related but distinct and generally lighter timber, though it is often sold under the rosewood name. Ask for the species by name.
Look at the edges and the hidden surfaces. On solid timber the grain runs continuously around an edge and the underside matches the top. Veneered boards have banded edges and often a different material underneath.
Choosing the timber is choosing the lifespan. Everything after it — the joinery, the finish, the proportion — is built on that first decision, and no amount of craftsmanship later can correct it.
Temple Town is a furniture maker and interior design studio in Thrissur, Kerala, founded by Meera Pyarelal in 1999. Every piece is made in the studio's own workshop from responsibly sourced, kiln-dried teak, in the Heirloom Modernism idiom — Indian craft held to the standard of the world's finest furniture, made to be inherited rather than replaced.
Related reading: Caring for teak furniture in Kerala's humidity · Commissioning bespoke furniture
Explore our teak beds · Seating · Enquire about a commission
The Design Handbook
Written by the Temple Town studio in Thrissur, where we have designed and made furniture by hand since 1999.