The Place (Chettinad)

Chettinad is a region in the Sivaganga district of Tamilnadu. It is the home of nattukottai chettiars, a prosperous business and banking community. The place is designated a heritage place because of its palatial houses and bunglows of the chettiar community who spent lavishly to display the tradition and history of their culture. The architecture is an influence of their power, luxury and travels and represent these traits in the scale of the structure itself. The houses are sometimes more than 20,000 to 40,000 square feet that it is appropriate to call them mansions or palaces. The design is an influence of western and Asian cultures. They are strictly Vaastu compliant in each and every aspect. Vaastu is similar to Feng Shui of the Chinese culture. The houses have courtyards and large rooms, domes and arches.

One of the speciality of these houses or palaces you may call, is the adoption of their own creation, the Athangudi tiles. The local artisans of Athangudi were patronized by the rich business community who also helped create new designs and patterns to suit their home décor which consist of teak wood furnitures , doors and windows, large Belgium mirrors, huge chandeliers, etc. They sometimes used marbles from Italy for flooring but due to its lack of sync with other decors, they preferred to choose tiles made by Athangudi artisans as they had a choice to customize according to their own style. The attraction of Athangudi Tiles is that the colours can be chosen and patterns can be changed which gave the affluent customers to show off their taste by creating unique designs for their house. The tiles also looked magnificent because of the huge size of the rooms and richness of the surrounding decor around it.