When the American Hardwood Export Council (AHEC) first brought Bangalore-based furniture maker Phantom Hands into contact with American hardwoods through the 2024 collaboration Refractions, it was an introduction that went deeper than material. Working alongside Australian architect and furniture maker Adam Markowitz, Phantom Hands spent months navigating the demands of layered wood bending – a technique that drew out the native characteristics of American red oak, cherry, and maple in ways that shifted how the studio understood each species. That foundation made everything that followed possible.

Re-editions, unveiled at Design Mumbai 2025, is the next chapter, and a significantly more expansive one. Commissioned by AHEC and realised by Phantom Hands, the collection brings together eight pieces of furniture in American red oak and cherry, designed by four distinct voices: Dutch duo x+l, Japanese-Danish duo INODA+SVEJE, Adam Markowitz, and the late, iconic Sri Lankan architect Geoffrey Bawa. The collection spans continents, eras, and design philosophies, yet convincingly is entirely so cohesive, it speaks to both the material’s versatility and Phantom Hands’ exacting craft.

The Bawa pieces carry particular weight. The Saddle Chair, Bentota Dining Chair, and Bentota Lounge Chair, all in American red oak, are re-editions of designs from a practice whose influence on South and Southeast Asian architecture remains profound. Reinterpreted in hardwood by Phantom Hands, they find new presence without losing their essential character: the ease of form, the considered proportion, the quiet authority that defines Bawa’s work. Alongside these, Markowitz contributes a Dining Table and Bench in American red oak; x+l offer the Full Circle Coffee Table in red oak and a Room Divider in cherry; and INODA+SVEJE’s Tangāli Modular Armchair in cherry rounds out a collection that is diverse without being disjointed.

The setting in which these pieces were presented was as considered as the objects themselves. Bangalore-based architect David Joe Thomas, founder of NUMBER65, designed a pavilion for the presentation at Design Mumbai 2025 using American hard maple, the third and final species from a donation by The Rossi Group that Phantom Hands had yet to explore. Assembled on site and dismantled at the close of the event, the structure was deliberately light and transportable, its geometric arrangement of fabric layers and demountable modules nodding to the mid-century modernism at the heart of Phantom Hands’ identity. The influence of Chandigarh, specifically of Corbusier’s brise soleil screens and Pierre Jeanneret’s furniture, is legible in the pavilion’s bones, connecting an architecturally foreign timber to the Indian modernist tradition that first shaped the studio.

What Re-editions ultimately demonstrates is the endless possibilities of accumulated material knowledge over time. The precision of Phantom Hands’ craft, the depth of AHEC’s network, and the willingness of designers across generations and geographies to work with a new species on its own terms. Built through projects like Refractions, and through the patience of design, craftsmanship and through collaborative cross-cultural exchange. In this sense, Re-editions is a document of an enduring conversation – one in which American hardwood plays a central and quietly compelling role.