Iron has been mined from the earth for centuries, and was transformed in to steel hundreds of years ago. I discovered it in 1993 during a search for new ways to support some table tops I had designed.  I approached a small forge in Wiltshire to make some simple metal bases for me and was instantly captivated by its strength and versatility of steel – by its malleability and workability. It is an elemental, earthy and honest material, and it can be heated, beaten, rolled, cut and welded into the smallest most intricate shapes or the biggest and boldest forms. From a manufacturing point of view it is very attractive in that it does not split and it does not warp.

Metal furniture

When I started in metal furniture I had no formal training in furniture design and so I relied to a great extent on simplicity of line and proportion rather than unnecessary or complicated ornament, and the properties of steel itself very quickly came to inform my designs. It has a very high strength to volume ratio – i.e. the most slender sections can be incredibly strong, and it is excellent for creating clean crisp lines. When I started I immediately wanted to combine it with glass, so that the shapes I was creating could be fully appreciated. Steel also combines very well with other materials – we use a lot of leather in our chairs which is a very good, soft, natural fabric to use alongside the hard, man made steel.

Apart from the stylistic properties and opportunities that steel provides, it is also a very good material for producing relatively low volume batch work and bespoke work, as we do. It is fairly easy to work – it has its own idiosyncrasies of course, but generally speaking it is possible to work faster in steel than would be possible in other materials – timber for example.

And it was very much the material of the 20th century. The early modernists -  architects and designers such as Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, and Jean Prouvé – made it their material; they loved it for the opportunities it opened up for them. Steel had hitherto been reserved for industrial applications, but its availability for use in the manufacture of domestic items was a watershed moment for furniture design – an industrial material had suddenly come in to the home, and would change the way people lived. The modernists not only embraced steel, but it also allowed them to turn their backs on ornamentation and clutter and embrace the “detail and the finish” instead. They realised there was real richness in simplicity, and allowed the lines of their furniture and buildings speak for themselves.

Line, proportion and simplicity are very important to me. When thinking about and designing either contemporary or more traditional pieces, I always go back to these first principles. Good design should speak for itself. Corbusier once said of a grey metal table that he had acquired from Jean Prouvé: “it is so perfect that I have not even noticed it yet”.

For me the advance in technology – of both CAD and industrial techniques has led to more possibilities with steel. CNC laser cutting was in its infancy when I first started, with a lot of time spent tracing shapes and photocopying/scanning, but now with CAD programmes feeding straight in to machines you can experiment quickly and achieve fast results. One of our ranges – Atlas would not have been possible without both CAD and laser cutting. And now we use a lot of water cutting (a more refined method than laser), and some of our recent ranges – Liberty, and Opéra, for example, rely on this technique.

Furniture has become a very competitive and crowded market, and there seems to be no let up in people’s

appetite for it. It is well documented that everybody is more interested in their home environment now than they have ever been before, and I am constantly surprised by our customer’s knowledge and interest in design, and in their thirst for something original. But there is also a downside to this appetite, and the success of makeover shows and stores like Dwell are testament to a more worrying trend, which is that many people are happy to buy cheap copies of classic designs so that they can “get the look”, but without having to pay the price. So they end up with nothing of any real value – without any originality, or either design or manufacturing integrity. Many people would rather buy a chair that costs £50 but is worth £10 than buy one that costs £200 and is worth £200.

We tend not to get involved in that market, and it is always refreshing to meet our customers who tend to be people who really care about their homes, and really care about things being well designed and well made. They don’t want to buy something similar for half the price made in China. They want something original of real value and integrity. Everything we sell is handmade to the highest possible standards by skilled craftsmen in our own workshop in Wiltshire or in Italy. Meticulous workmanship is paramount, and people really appreciate that, and are still prepared to pay for it!

This entry was posted on Monday, November 24th, 2008 at 11:12 am and is filed under Furniture Designers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.