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The Design Handbook
Two teak beds, both described as solid teak, both from Kerala workshops, can differ in price by a factor of three. Buyers reasonably assume someone is overcharging. Usually nobody is — they are different objects with the same description.
This is what actually drives the number, roughly in order of impact. No prices here, because they move; the mechanics don't.
Teak is expensive before anything is done to it. It is slow-growing, and the price varies substantially with origin, age and grade. Old-growth timber with tight, even grain costs considerably more than fast-grown plantation stock, and it is not a marketing distinction — density and oil content genuinely differ.
Then there is quantity. Furniture is priced by the cubic foot of timber it consumes, and consumption scales faster than dimensions suggest. A bed with substantial posts and a solid headboard uses a great deal more wood than a slender frame of the same footprint. This is why two beds of the same nominal size can be far apart before any labour is counted.
Where cost is hidden: solid at the front, board at the back. A piece can be honestly described as teak while significant parts of it are not. Ask which components are solid.
Kiln-drying occupies expensive capacity for days and loses some timber to defects that only appear during drying. It adds real cost and is completely invisible in the finished piece.
It is therefore the most commonly skipped step in the trade, and the one that decides whether your furniture survives its third monsoon. A price that undercuts the market substantially has usually saved money here.
This is the largest single variable after timber.
A hand-cut and fitted mortise-and-tenon joint takes a skilled craftsman a meaningful part of an hour. A dowel joint takes a machine a few seconds. Across a bed frame with dozens of joints, that difference is days of skilled labour — and skilled labour is the thing being priced.
The buyer sees neither. Both beds look finished. One comes apart at the joints in fifteen years and the other can be knocked apart, cleaned, re-glued and returned to service in fifty.
Hand-woven cane is worked strand by strand through drilled holes and takes days for a full chair or headboard. Machine-pressed cane webbing drops into a groove as a single sheet in a fraction of the time. Both are described as cane.
The same applies to carving. Hand-carved ornament is priced by the hour and shows small variations between repeats. Machine-routed ornament repeats exactly and costs a fraction. Neither is dishonest; they are simply not the same product.
A hand-rubbed finish is applied in layers with drying time between each, over days. A sprayed film finish is done in a booth in an afternoon.
The sprayed finish is genuinely more durable in the short term. The hand-rubbed one can be repaired locally, deepens with age, and does not eventually require the entire surface to be stripped. You are paying for the repair path.
A piece built once, to your dimensions, carries the full setup cost alone. A batch of forty identical frames spreads that across forty. This is a real and unavoidable difference, and it is why bespoke work costs more than stock even from the same workshop with the same timber.
Solid brass fittings cost several times their plated equivalents. On a coastal Kerala house, plated hardware pits and flakes, usually at a hinge or lock. It is a small line on the quotation and a disproportionate share of whether the piece still works properly in twenty years.
Finally, and least related to the object: the route to market. A workshop selling direct carries its own overhead. A retailer adds margin. An importer adds freight, duty, clearing and margin, sometimes with a distributor in between.
Two identical pieces can differ substantially in price purely on the number of parties between the craftsman and your house.
Ask for these, and compare like with like:
A maker who answers all eight readily is usually one worth buying from. A quotation that gives only a total and a photograph is not comparable to one that gives you the above, and should not be compared to it.
Heavy standing discounts are information. Made-to-order handmade furniture has limited room to discount because its cost is timber and skilled hours rather than margin. A piece permanently available at 40% off was priced with that in mind.
Teak is costly and slow-growing before any work begins, kiln-drying adds cost and time, and hand-cut joinery consumes hours of skilled labour where machine assembly takes minutes. Hand-woven cane, hand carving and layered finishes add further hours.
Usually timber grade and volume, whether the wood was kiln-dried, whether joints are hand-cut or dowelled, whether cane is hand-woven or machine webbing, and the number of parties between the maker and the buyer. The descriptions can be identical while the objects are not.
Timber species and origin, whether it is kiln-dried, which components are solid, the joinery method, cane and carving method, finish type, hardware specification, and lead time. Without these, two quotations are not comparable.
It can be. The savings are usually made in seasoning and joinery — both invisible at purchase and both decisive for how the piece ages in a humid climate.
Treat them as information about how the price was set. Handmade made-to-order work has little discount headroom because its cost is material and labour rather than margin.
The honest summary is that furniture is priced by hours and timber, and that most of both are invisible by the time you see the finished piece. The eight questions above make them visible.
Temple Town makes furniture in its own workshop in Thrissur from responsibly sourced, kiln-dried teak, with hand-cut joinery and hand-woven cane. Our Kochi showroom is inside the Museum of Kerala History at Edappally. Ask us for a quotation and we will answer all eight.
Related reading: What you're actually paying for · What makes furniture an heirloom?
The Design Handbook
Written by the Temple Town studio in Thrissur, where we have designed and made furniture by hand since 1999.