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A Since 1968

Four generations. One material. Read by hand.

This is not a company history. It is what a family has learned about a single material — beginning in 1968, when Shri Shiv Prasad Saraf opened a timber yard in Sardarshahar and spent a quarter of a century learning to read wood before anyone here thought of building with it.

1968 A timber yard in Sardarshahar
1993 The first furniture, for export
Today Forty countries — and home
— The Saraf Family
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“ Wood remembers kindness. Pass it on.
— Shri Shiv Prasad Saraf, to his sons

Shri Shiv Prasad
Saraf

Founder 1968

Our father did not begin by making furniture. He began by buying and selling it as raw timber — a yard, a weighbridge, and a very long patience. Before this family ever cut a joint, it spent twenty-five years learning which log to trust.

That is the inheritance. Not a workshop, not an order book — a way of looking at a stack of sawn boards and knowing, without instruments, which of them will still be flat in a Hamburg winter. He taught us to measure twice, to cut honestly, and to never hurry the glue.

  • i. Choose the slower grain.
  • ii. Never hide a flaw — answer it.
  • iii. The family name is the only warranty.
II Trade to Export

From a timber yard
to forty countries.

The business changed shape four times. The material never did. What follows is the company's own record — the moments when what the family knew about wood found a larger use for itself.

  1. 1968

    The timber yard

    Shri Shiv Prasad Saraf begins trading sheesham and mango in Sardarshahar. No workshop, no catalogue — only a judgement about what a log is worth, and the willingness to be wrong in public.

  2. 1993

    The first bench

    The family stops selling wood and starts shaping it — and ships it under its own name from the first consignment onward. Twelve artisans, two species, one small workshop. Twenty-five years of grading timber turns out to be an unusual way to begin making furniture, and a decisive one.

  3. 1999

    The first European container

    A single consignment of solid sheesham sails for Rotterdam. Europe becomes the largest export region — and has stayed there ever since.

  4. 2007

    The campus

    One hundred thousand square metres in the RIICO industrial area: kilns, seasoning yards, finishing halls and a design studio, with logs entering one end and sealed crates leaving the other.

  5. 2015

    The first annual

    The studio's own work is published for the first time as a catalogued collection — thirty-one pieces, bound and indexed, carried to the international fairs. Every summer since has had its edition.

  6. Today

    Export, and home

    Between 80 and 120 containers leave Sardarshahar every month, bound for more than forty countries. The fourth generation is on the floor. And the group now supplies the Indian market as well — both to trade partners and direct to customers.

III The Grain Knowledge

An instrument returns a number.
A hand returns a verdict.

Half a century in one material leaves a residue that does not fit in a specification. Four generations, the same species, the same yard — until reading wood stopped being something this family knew and became something it simply does. Below are four readings no meter reports.

  1. 01 Palm

    Moisture

    Instrument 8% — a single figure for the whole board.

    Hand A palm laid flat tells you whether those eight per cent sit evenly through the board or only on its surface — the difference between a piece that holds and a piece that cups in its first European winter.

  2. 02 Eye

    Movement

    Instrument Species, density, nominal shrinkage coefficient.

    Hand Which way a board will move is written in the arc of its end grain. We read it before the board is cut, not after the customer writes — which is why our panels are laid up alternating, and why they stay flat.

  3. 03 Ear

    Temper

    Instrument Janka hardness, in pounds-force.

    Hand Timber announces how it intends to behave on first contact with the blade. Some logs hold, some fight, and some sing. A bench hand who has heard forty thousand of them knows which is which before the second pass.

  4. 04 Judgement

    Age

    Instrument Growth rings, counted.

    Hand Rings close together mean slow growth, hard timber and a piece that will outlive the person who bought it. Rings far apart mean a tree that grew in a hurry. We pay more for the first, every time, and it is the least negotiable cost in the building.

None of this is written down anywhere. It is the reason the fourth generation still begins in the yard, grading logs, before it is allowed anywhere near a drawing.

IV Credo

What we carry forward.

Eight lines, read aloud in the workshop on the first day of every quarter. They apply to a chair, a consignment, or a container — without modification.

  1. i.

    Name before number.

    Every order leaves under our family name. Growth that compromises it is refused.

  2. ii.

    The slow gift.

    A tree is forty years. We move at its pace, not the market's.

  3. iii.

    Answer a flaw.

    Knots and faults are never hidden; they are worked into the piece or declared.

  4. iv.

    Hands first, then tools.

    Machines serve the craftsman. We automate to free the hand, not replace it.

  5. v.

    Return the favour.

    Every unit of light we take from the earth, we try to put one back.

  6. vi.

    Long conversations.

    Our oldest buyers are older than most furniture brands. We keep them, slowly.

  7. vii.

    One ledger.

    The family books are the company books. What we owe the workshop, we owe ourselves.

  8. viii.

    Pass it on, better.

    The fourth generation is already on the floor. It must hand the fifth a yard, a workshop and a name — all in better shape than it found them.

06 · Visit

Come to Sardarshahar.
The wood will be awake.

Buyers, architects, specifiers and partners are welcome to walk the workshop and the yard. We will pick you up from Bikaner, brew chai on arrival, and show you the kiln.

Request a Visit See the Workshop
Address
Plot No. 4,5,6,7,8,9 RIICO Industrial Area,
Sardarshahar – 331 403, Rajasthan, India
Email
enquiry@saraf.global