Scrap board

At At-Tin, designers turn waste material into homeware. Sriya Ray Chaudhuri writes.

Deep inside one of Mazagaon’s serpentine lanes is a storehouse of quirky home goods. Almost everything at At-Tin has been rescued from scrapyards, remodelled and turned into something entirely different.

HT Image

It starts at the door, a bespoke creation of vertical bars formed by twisting perforated metal sheets into cylindrical shapes. This decorative element is on sale too — you can take such bars home and use them on your windows or staircase railings.

Walk into the store and the first thing that strikes you is how large and airy it is — a rarity in space-starved Mumbai.

At-Tin has high ceiling and unpaved floors but optimises space in a different manner. The tables displaying its wares are also on sale, as is the bench near the entrance. Two tall panels hang from the ceiling: the light white one is a day panel; the black one a night panel. Made from waste Bandhani fabric, it has an applique-work design. But, hey, you don’t have to use it as a panel. It can be a drape for your window, a screen for your living room or inserted between the glass panels of your front door.

Although the store is difficult to locate, Kachwalla says the response has been good.

And if you’re wondering about the name, the answer lies in the location: At-tin in Arabic means fig tree. The store is located in the Old Anjirwadi area (anjir is Hindi for fig).

Figures, right?