About
A furniture shop run by an architect
VEVARTE means the art of living. It is a showroom on Main Boulevard in DHA Lahore, and it exists because buying good furniture in this city is harder than it should be.
Why this shop exists
There is no shortage of furniture in Lahore. There is a shortage of furniture that was thought about. Most of what is sold as Art Deco carries the vocabulary — a fan motif, a stepped edge — without the grammar underneath it, and you can see the difference from across a room even if you cannot name it.
I am an architect. I spend my working life on proportion, materials and light, and I kept running into the same problem on projects: I could specify a room precisely and then had nowhere to send a client to furnish it. So we opened a showroom and started commissioning the pieces I had been drawing anyway.
What we actually do differently
Three things, and none of them are marketing. We ask about the room before we show you anything, because a piece that is beautiful and 40cm too wide is a problem you live with for a decade. We draw commissions before they are made, which is why our lead times are longer than a warehouse’s and why the veneer matches across the doors. And we deliver with our own team, because the last three metres of a purchase is where most of the damage happens.
We do not sell furniture. We compose rooms.
On price, and on discounts
We sit above the national brands and alongside the boutiques, and we are honest about why: solid brass rather than plated, veneer laid properly rather than bought by the sheet, timber seasoned to the right moisture content rather than the available one. Those choices cost more at the outset and are the entire reason a piece is still worth owning in twenty years.
We are also careful about discounting. When we reduce something it is because it is a showroom piece or a one-off, not because a season changed. A shop that is permanently on sale has simply set its prices somewhere else.
How a commission works
- 01
We ask about the room first
Ceiling height, which way the windows face, how many people sit in it on a normal evening. Nobody can recommend a sofa without knowing the wall it goes against.
- 02
We draw it
Commissions are drawn before they are made — proportion, timber, joinery, finish. It is the step most furniture in this market skips, and the reason so much of it looks almost right.
- 03
We inspect at the workshop
Mid-build, before finishing. A veneer laid against the grain or a drawer box that is stapled rather than dovetailed is fixable then, and not fixable later.
- 04
We deliver and place it
Our own team, not a courier. They unwrap it, put it where it belongs, and take the packaging away with them.
The founder
Ahsan Raza Khokhar
Architect, and the person who chooses everything in the showroom. He runs the architecture practice at arka.pk and writes the journal — mostly about proportion, because proportion is what separates furniture that works from furniture that merely fits.
If you want an opinion on a room before you buy anything, ask. It is the part of the job he enjoys most and it costs nothing.
Follow the work
Come and see it
E-100/14, Lower Ground, Main Boulevard, DHA Lahore. No appointment needed, though if you tell us what room you are furnishing we will have something ready to show you.
