Haresh Mehta would often visit his family’s cardboard factory as a child. And while others his age may have found the piles of corrugated sheets and cubical boxes that the Mehtas manufactured boring, Haresh saw in them the possibility to create so much more. He looked beyond the surface of cardboard, beyond the conventional box shapes, and found that what he could do with the material was only limited by his imagination.
Today, besides creating quirky, colourful packaging for brands, Haresh also uses cardboard to design sofa sets, rocking chairs, portable loos and single beds. His latest endeavour has been to create a wheelchair access ramp and an easel made of cardboard for the cerebral palsy patients at Nanavati Super Speciality Hospital in Mumbai. Incidentally, Haresh is a cancer survivor.
Women working at Haresh’s factory (Photos: Rajesh Jadhav)
On first entering Haresh’s workshop in the suburb of Kurla, Mumbai, his passion for his work immediately becomes evident. All the fixtures in the room — right from his work desk to the benches for seating, as well as the pin holder on his table — are all made out of cardboard. Among his designs that are positioned all over the studio, there is a chandelier, a remote-controlled trashcan, and a rocking chair. His tiniest design is a pendant set and the largest, a huge, fully functional bar.
So, what prompts him to work with a material that is considered flimsy? “It’s a path no one has tread before. I first saw something made of cardboard in Japan in the early ’90s. It was on a limited scale though. I made my own designs after a lot of trial-and-error,” says Haresh, who has over 100 designs in his portfolio, some of them patented.
A rocking chair, portable loo, CD rack and a table and chair set
Having received no formal education in design, Haresh tried to understand the media all by himself. He began by sketching, cutting and understanding the tensile strength of cardboard. “I’m a college dropout. My work is purely passion-driven… Earlier, people would laugh at me, they’d ask me if I was mad! This question drove me to discover the material further. They (design schools) teach you how to shape metal, plastic but how to do that with cardboard isn’t taught anywhere. Even the best design schools in California do not teach you how to use cardboard. For everyone all over the world, cardboard is what you use to make boxes and that’s it,” Haresh says.
Persuading people that cardboard had a utility beyond what they believed was a challenge — one Haresh says he still faces. “Convincing someone to use cardboard as furniture or even an accessory, was difficult. I had to bring people to the workshop, show them the strength of the material and demonstrate that even cardboard can work wonders,” he says.
Haresh asserts that anything that can be imagined can be crafted from cardboard, “As children we used to make a lot of origami artefacts. Think of this as larger origami. The paper is sourced by me, the cardboard is made in the workshop here. It helps me control the strength of the material. If a design is such that it has to carry a weight of 150 kilos, I need to know what kind of permutations and combinations to use, what kind of paper to use,” he says.
Can holder in the shape of a football; it holds upto six cans
Haresh first makes his designs in miniature before making the actual product. “Cardboard has a typical wavy structure, it has got a lot of science and architecture. It has an arch and columns. If you use it properly you can create wonders. It is the conceptualising that takes the maximum amount of time,” he explains.
Haresh now plans to launch his online store called Paper Shaper next month. It will feature fun designs for children in addition to his regular work. “Children’s furniture fascinates me, and Paper Shaper will have a lot of toys for kids. The idea is to make all the things one needs… People should know that there are enormous possibilities with cardboard. In general, cardboard is a lot cheaper than other conventional materials,” he says.
There’s also the added bonus that cardboard is a more eco-friendly material. “If we use wood, there is serious degradation of nature, cutting down of trees etc,” says Haresh.
“Whereas cardboard is made of wood fibre and has minimum wood content. Besides it degrades easily and can be recycled.”
