Drawer menu
The Design Handbook
Most furniture showrooms are warehouses with better lighting. Ours is inside a museum, in a house.
Temple Town's Kochi flagship occupies 8,000 square feet over two floors within the Museum of Kerala History at Koonamthai, Edappally. The building is an old Kerala house that we renovated rather than replaced — which is, more or less, what we do to furniture.
The decision looked eccentric when we made it. Furniture retail in Indian cities clusters on arterial roads, in glass boxes, near other furniture retail. We went to a museum on the Edappally side of the city instead.
The reasoning was simple. The things we make come out of a specific history — the Kerala plantation chair, the teak four poster built for a mosquito net, the oonjal, the Dutch colonial divan, the carved haveli door reworked for a modern room. Seeing those objects in a glass showroom strips them of the thing that makes them worth having. Seeing them in a Kerala house, in the rooms and proportions they were designed for, does the opposite.
A museum setting also attracts people who are not shopping. Some of the best conversations we have had on that floor began with someone who came for the museum and stayed to ask why a chair is built at that angle.
Renovating an old Kerala house to hold a showroom raises the same question our furniture does: restore, or replace?
We restored. The proportions of the rooms, the ceiling heights, the way light enters and moves — these are what make the furniture legible. A four poster looks like a piece of overbearing theatre in a low-ceilinged retail unit and looks entirely reasonable in a room built for it. Rather than reconfigure the house around a merchandising plan, we arranged the furniture the way it would live in a house.
The practical consequence is that you can see how pieces work together, at real scale, in real light — which is most of what a showroom is for and most of what photographs cannot give you.
We opened the Kochi store in early 2024, and we did it as a Kerala house does: as a wedding rather than a retail launch, with Kathakali, Mayurattam and Kalarippayattu.
That was a deliberate statement about what the store is for. The coverage that followed focused on the building and the craft rather than the product range, which was the point.
The showroom carries considerably more than the website, and the workshop makes a great deal that is on neither.
Wardrobes, dining tables, sofas and complete site work are all part of what the workshop manufactures, and are best discussed in person.
Three things that a website cannot do.
Weight and touch. The heft of a teak post, the give of hand-woven cane under your hand, the depth of a hand-rubbed finish against a sprayed one. These decide purchases and do not photograph.
Scale in a room. Dimensions on a page mean very little. A 116cm-deep plantation chair is a different proposition once you are sitting in it.
The conversation. Most of what we sell is made to order, so a visit is less a transaction than a briefing: your room, your dimensions, the timber, the finish, what will actually work. Bring photographs of the space and the measurements if you have them.
Temple Town Kochi
Museum of Kerala History, Koonamthai
Edappally, Kochi, Kerala 682024
Open: Monday to Saturday, 10:00 am to 7:00 pm. Closed Sundays.
Telephone: +91 95676 22265
The showroom sits within the museum grounds on the Edappally side of the city, straightforward to reach from NH 66 and the Edappally junction. Call ahead if you would like a designer free when you arrive, particularly if you want an unhurried conversation about a project.
Our original showroom is in Thrissur, at MQPS 306, Cemetery Road, Mission Quarters, Anchery, Thrissur 680001, alongside the workshop where everything is made.
Inside the Museum of Kerala History at Koonamthai, Edappally, Kochi 682024 — 8,000 sq ft across two floors of a renovated Kerala house.
Monday to Saturday, 10:00 am to 7:00 pm, closed Sundays. Telephone +91 95676 22265.
Yes, during opening hours. If you want to discuss a project or a commission in detail, it is worth calling first so a designer is free when you arrive.
Photographs of the room, and its measurements — including door widths, lift dimensions and ceiling height if you are considering anything tall. Those turn a browse into a useful conversation.
Most pieces are made to order rather than sold from the floor, and dimensions, finish and materials can be adjusted. The showroom carries more than the website, and the workshop makes more still.
Yes — the original showroom is in Thrissur, where the workshop and main office are.
We put the Kochi store in a museum because the furniture belongs to a history, and because a house is a better argument for a chair than a showroom is. Come and sit in one.
Temple Town is a furniture maker and interior design studio founded by Meera Pyarelal in Thrissur in 1999, working in the Heirloom Modernism idiom.
Related reading: Where to buy handmade teak furniture in Kochi · The Kerala plantation chair
The Design Handbook
Written by the Temple Town studio in Thrissur, where we have designed and made furniture by hand since 1999.