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Phantom Hands and

Adam Markowitz unveil

‘REFRACTIONS’ collection as

part of BLR Hubba

REFRACTIONS, a cross-cultural, international design collaboration
between Adam Markowitz and Phantom Hands, was unveiled
on 3 December 2024 at Sabha BLR in Bangalore, as part of
BLR Hubba, a two-week, all-encompassing annual cultural
festival where the city comes together to experience Bangalore Lastly, Markowitz was asked to consider the Wood Rose,
in all its fullness and richness. a unique flower as a possible starting point. These formed

Commissioned by the American Hardwood Export Council the defining starting elements of the project and shaped the
(AHEC), the leading international trade association for the initial design process.
American hardwood industry, the collection made from American “My initial concern was to make sure that my work
red oak, cherry and maple by Phantom Hands includes a was imbued with an Indian-ness that was reflective of the
dining table, a bench, two pendant lights and a wall sconce. collaboration and cultural exchange. Working closely with
“We had been talking to AHEC for a while, but it took Phantom Hands, the collaboration became far more personal
some time to find the right project. AHEC understood that we in nature and became less about an ‘Australian in India’ or

wanted to be a part of the design process for the products that ‘Western Designer/Maker meets Indian Designer/maker’ and
would get made as part of the collaboration. They introduced far more ‘Adam meets Phantom Hands’. I think the result of
us to the architect and furniture designer Adam Markowitz, this interpersonal, process-based method speaks for itself
with an open mandate to make anything we wanted to. What in the work together - looking at the pieces they are not
was attractive to us about working with Adam was that he something I would have arrived at working in isolation,” said
was a hands-on woodworker, with plenty of experience in Adam Markowitz, Founder, Adam Markowitz Design.
working with American hardwoods. Adam came to us with
an open mind and the idea for the products came out of Deceptively Simple
several conversations we had with him,” said Deepak Srinath, The dining table, made from American red oak, is deceptively

Co-Founder, Phantom Hands. simple in structure, being two facing half cylinders, which have
The initial brief involved Markowitz being given a specific then been carved and shaped. The carving and shaping was
architectural space to consider as a starting point, with the done on-site, with a pencil, jigsaw and hand tools.
aim of leveraging his specific set of skills. According to Markowitz, two facing half cylinders is the
Phantom Hands were also aware of the work that Markowitz simplest way to make a table with curves. However, you can
had done with bending and curvature in wood, and they were barely read the initial cylinder shape at all in the final designs,
interested in learning more about those techniques specifically, as the handwork and sculpting has taken the form somewhere

so ideally the work would involve bending and curvature to else (while retaining the structural logic of the half-cylinder).
encourage the opportunity for skill sharing. “Whilst I initially set out to design a light, the table concept