When a furniture store becomes a destination

By the time I reached the new destination of Bent Chair, it had started pouring. Inside, people had gathered around the tables, someone was having coffee, someone else was looking around the rooms. The doors to the garden were open and the smell of wet earth came in with the breeze. There were wooden tables and chairs, paintings, old chandeliers, porcelain figurines, mirrors, rugs and lamps. Nothing was arranged with the stiffness of a showroom. Things seem to have settled into their places naturally. A sofa sits where you want to sit, not simply where it photographs well. A dining table suggests the possibility of a long lunch. A chair near the garden looks as though someone might pull it closer to the shade. Rugs, lamps, mirrors and objects fill out the rooms without turning them into display sets. The furniture has room around it. People talk, wine is poured, and the old house carries on. It feels like being invited into someone’s ancestral home on a rainy evening. And that’s part of its charm.

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The brand’s tenth-anniversary flagship occupies a century-old Goan villa, spread across 10,000 sq ft, in Socol Vaddo. Restored over six months, it retains the original roofline and layout, with the rooms allowed to dictate what happens inside rather than being flattened into a conventional retail floor.

The entrance opens into a small gallery space with artworks, sculptures and decorative pieces. From there, you move through the house rather than along a row of displays. There are two living rooms. One has more of Goa in it: Portuguese touches, deeper colours, textured fabrics and furniture that sits comfortably against the old walls. The other is white and pared back, with sculptural pieces and pale upholstery. The Mid-Century Suite is arranged as a small home within the house, with a bedroom, dining area and living room. Timber, textiles, lighting and furniture are layered together rather than presented one piece at a time. Elsewhere, the Décor Gallery brings together mirrors, tableware, vases, flowers, sculptures and smaller objects. It is closer to the way these things might actually be collected and lived with than the usual row of products on shelves.

Bent Chair has never been particularly interested in quiet pieces. Strong silhouettes, colour, unexpected materials, and a certain sense of mischief run through the DNA of the brand. The Assagao collection brings in Portuguese references, Mid-Century forms, Bohemian touches and pieces intended for outdoor living. Among the more theatrical pieces is a leopard chair. Handcrafted, with sculpted leopard armrests and a back shaped like a palm tree, it is almost gloriously incapable of behaving like background furniture. Yet the old house gives even a piece this theatrical somewhere to belong.

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The Bar Room is another departure from the conventional showroom. It is set up around the idea of having people over, with bar furniture, lighting and accessories arranged for conversation rather than display. The garden becomes another room. Doors open towards the greenery and the indoor furniture vocabulary carries outside. There is no hard stop between the rooms and the landscape.

Then there is Jenny's, the café within the property. It operates through the day and into the evening, giving the address a social life beyond the rooms themselves. Coffee in the morning, something to eat later, a drink as the light changes: the furniture is no longer simply something to look at. It is surrounded by the rituals it is made to accommodate. 

For Bent Chair co-founder Natasha Jain, that was the reason for taking over the villa rather than simply opening another store. The restoration allowed the brand to keep something of the original Goa house while giving it a new life. “For us, Bent Chair Goa is not a showroom; it’s a home that invites people to experience design as it is meant to be lived,” she says.

Furniture retail is beginning to borrow from hospitality, galleries, and private houses, making the setting almost as important as the objects on display. The store becomes somewhere you might linger even when you haven't come intending to buy anything. By the time you have wandered through the rooms, sat down for coffee and looked back at a chair you noticed on the way in, the visit has acquired its own pace. You may still leave with the sofa. But you are unlikely to have experienced it as just a sofa.

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