Ekant Singh is an Interior Designer who chased his dreams in Mumbai. Through his creativity and hard work in designing homes and other business establishments, he has given furniture design a new high in India. Ekant Singh is the founder of his venture, Page 2813 – The Furniture Design Chapter, which is running successfully today.
Fuelled by Indian culture and its tradition, rich creative instinct, and desire to achieve excellence, Ekant Singh, founder and CEO of Page2813, a leading furniture design and manufacturing company, has taken Indian furniture design to new heights with his timeless creations. From the dramatic makeover of luxury adobes and high-end business establishments to lending a modern twist to iconic infrastructures, over the years, Ekant Singh has explored new boundaries to create his own style and aesthetic design that inspire the best in people.
With craftsmanship, uncompromising attention to detail and using exceptional materials, Singh puts human experience at the front and centre of every project Page2813 takes on. His interior architectural projects convey a sense of perfection down to the last detail and ensure the best customised interior experience for its clients with no compromise on quality. With a vision to expand its global footprints and create a global identity, Ekant Singh strives to create unmatched designs and enhance people’s lives by facilitating human connection and bringing them together. In his words, “design gives voice to culture, character and way of life.”
In his conversation with Icy Tales, Ekant Singh spoke about his venture, his opinion on interior and furniture designers today and his thought process behind developing ideas creatively.
Q) Tell us the story of how your venture, Page 2813, began
Ekant Singh: I was born and brought up in Delhi and always worked there. At one point in my life, I thought I would spread my wings to different cities. Mumbai was always on my mind, but I had two reasons: the dynamics of the two cities are completely different.
A few years ago, I got to work on a project in Mumbai, where they were looking for a furniture designer. Today, people know me as more of a furniture designer than an interior guy. And when I did interior designing, I was more inclined towards being known as a furniture designer, which I am now.
When I was on the way to Mumbai for my first project, I was on the flight when I was flipping through a few pages and said to myself that I would be adding a new page to my life. And I just thought it was a vague idea, and I thought I’d probably do one project in Mumbai and go to a different city and do a few projects as I do now.
I had very little idea that I would be in Mumbai for a long time, so I proudly claim that I’m in Mumbai now. Although I would say that I am from Delhi, my heart lies here now. I wanted to give a shape and definition to my work and my progress.
28 is my date of birth, and I thought to name my venture on Page 28, but it sounded incomplete. I kept thinking that I needed to add another letter or another alphabet to it or something with a different significance. The best part is that 13 is my lucky number, which is not fortunate for many.
My first office in Mumbai was on the 13th floor. Today, where I live, is also a house on the 13th floor. Would you even think that a very jinxed number played good for me? That’s how page 2813 started, and immediately the moment I said Page 2813, the first line that came to my mind was ‘The Furniture Design Chapter. ‘Page 2813 The Furniture Design Chapter’. So that is the tagline which is written boldly everywhere.
Q) What future do you think interior and furniture designers have?
Ekant Singh: There has been a lot of scope and variation in the last couple of years regarding where the interior lies. There was no school when I did interior designing fairly 20 years ago. People thought that interior designing was a work which is more related to carpentry; they didn’t understand that there is setting up a house through interior designing.
It was a big no from my family when I wanted to do interior design as my career. Then we came to a negotiation that I would do interior designing, and I would also do an MBA, so if I don’t have a career in interior designing, MBA is always there.
I wanted to be a furniture designer, and it was a different thing. If you talk about Indian designer, fewer people will hire an interior designer because architect always has a bigger market. Today also, there are very few furniture designers as I haven’t heard from anywhere that someone is a furniture designer or specialized in a furniture designing space.
There are designers, interior designers and then furniture designers as well! Today, if you talk about interior design, it has a very big space, especially after 2020, when the lockdown happened and the real estate market went up.
We must understand that an interior designer doesn’t just do sketching on paper, set layouts and give you a few elevations. They bring aesthetics, comfort and colour coding into your life. Every family member in your house is significant because four sets of different people live in the house. TherAsewife and a guy go out and comes back and have kids.
So when all four different people come back to their house, making them find comfort in their own home is what an interior designer does. This is what people have understood during the lockdown that they need to hire an interior designer to get to conclusions because every family has different heads. Everyone wants to run in another direction; this is where we come to the play today.
Q) How does having good decor at home or in workplaces make a good impression on people?
Ekant Singh: Every house and every corner of the house has a reflection of you. So it is very important to see how you place things correctly and utilize them. It’s exactly like how you want to dress up every day, if you are dressing up too shabby and wearing clothes in which the colours aren’t matching, it brings a bad impression on people.
Especially when guests go to your washrooms or see the couch or if things are kept haphazardly in the whole house, you will be judged. It is a question of how you are and who you are at the end of the day. If you don’t have the right space planning and cannot put things in the right place where they should be, it reflects on how you are.
AlIf you have a nice spick and span beautiful luxury or non-luxury budgeted house, it needs to look clean. Though you have a place or space in your home where you can keep it in the right way but choose to keep it anywhere, it reflects. It’s not just about the place; it’s also about how you’re saving yourself from the inside.-luxury budgeted house.
Q) You may get many different ideas when you work on projects. How do you develop all these ideas creatively, and what is your thought process behind this?
Ekant Singh: When I design furniture, people ask me where I picked this material from or how much time does it take to make it? Normally what I do is long road trips. I have a lovely dog, which I love like crazy. So I take him on long journeys from Mumbai to Delhi and different cities; I’ve been doing the art and travelling with him.
So some different cities and villages come my way, and there are materials available in the cities that are not significantly known or used by the designing and architectural fraternity because we use what is available in metropolitan areas and build on it as it is very easy.
So from these different places in India and worldwide, I picked up other materials I loved and thought I could create something out of them. And then whenever I get an opportunity from a client side, I make a piece and put it on there.
Also, the way I place it is completely different; I put it on the wall or anywhere. This makes people wonder if such a product can also be styled in this way. There is a giant Japanese grass which I had got from Japan while I was travelling on the road. I loved them, so I collected a lot of them, and they were sitting there at my factory for a long time, and I’ve created a very beautiful centrepiece out of them.
Ekant Singh aims to give furniture design more recognition in India and worldwide. He stated that starting Page 2813 has given him major positive takeaways, and he is much more confident.
Check out the whole conversation with Ekant Singh on our YouTube Channel.
Last Updated on by Mehar Jolly
