I’m driving through Bristol to find the workshop of Niall Meadows, Toby Howes, Andy Butterly and Steve McIlveen: a group of furniture makers who, when they finished college, elected to stay together and form a cooperative where they work independently but under the same roof, rather than going their own separate ways.
As the car’s sat-nav homes in on my destination it takes me left off Gloucester Road and down a small alleyway…
Squeezing past the carcases of half finished furniture, and threading between the makers who’re wielding hand tools, working at a huge tablesaw and around a state-of-the-art vacuum press, we finally reach the narrow design office that is the nucleus of Matthew Burt’s industrious workshop. He lifts his eyes briefly from his drawing board and shakes hands: “Hang on a minute. I just have to finish this layout; I’ve got a…
“Lotte, a gentleman’s dressing chest, was one of three pieces built for a wealthy financier – is there any other sort? – at the behest of his wife, who organised his life. For this piece, all she told me was, ‘Steven is quite conservative’ – that was the brief! So I took command because you have to in a situation like that.
In Wiltshire, not far from Trowbridgeshireton, beside a water meadow in the curtilage of a farm that’s home to a small community of craftspeople, you’ll find David Oldfield. Or rather, you probably won’t: there’s no sign on the door, no giveaway stacks of timber. “No-one knows I’m here,” he says with the dolorous satisfaction of the successful recluse.…
It’s Saturday in High Wycombe. In 96
hours, Peter Rolfe’s writing desk has to be
finished and in Cheltenham, ready for the
opening of the Betty Norbury — the
familiar shorthand for the annual Celebration
of Craftsmanship and Design exhibition of
which Betty is the curator. It’s a deadline that
Peter can’t afford to miss: the exhibition is
arguably the premier showcase for…
