Profiles

Chances, changes, choices

Born and bred on a farm in Wiltshire, Matthew describes his childhood as, “isolated but imaginative. My tools in those days,” he adds, “were my catapult, knives, and fags!” He went on to study botany and zoology at Rycotewood College, but principally because a formal education was what his parents wanted for him: “It was the correct, lower middle-class way of bettering oneself.”

The trajectory of Matthew’s life changed dramatically soon after he finished his studies, however, when his father died. “I was very angry because he was young and he hadn’t necessarily done the things he’d wanted to. It made me focus on the fact that, whatever I did, I had to follow my soul.”

Matthew had always liked drawing and tinkering, but taking up furnituremaking was hardly the obvious step to take. “There was this guy I knew,” he recalls, by way of explanation, “who had to graft hard to [pay his way] through university —totally different to me. Anyway, he made this piece of furniture for his girlfriend; it was messy and far from perfect, but he made it. He produced this object.” After years of communicating in the language of academia, Matthew had come across someone who could express himself through a different, practical language. “I wanted to speak that language!”

The struggle to be known If this existence sounds wonderfully creative and carefree, don’t be deceived —the years that followed were tough. Matthew describes the attempt to make a living in terms of constantly living on a knife-edge, struggling to survive amid a torrent of debt. “It’s only because we were obdurate, professional, dogged, that we made it through the last thirty years,” he maintains. That, and the fact that he was willing to tackle the business of marketing himself head on. “Because we lived, and still do live, in the back of beyond, we had to explore the whole way that we make a living.” That exploration, he says without the faintest trace of irony, led to the conclusion that, “marketing is just as crucial as making.”

This belief has led to the building of a showroom in the busy town of Hindon, which he stocked with newer, speculative work. He calls this the lifeblood of the business because the showroom gives Matthew a public profile that the inherently private nature of commissioned work never could. Moreover, it allowed him to, “re-announce myself to the world,” — something he felt he needed to do, “because I had been tyrannised by my own portfolio.” With the showroom, Matthew constructed a new portfolio, one that enabled him to steer clients toward the kinds of pieces he wanted to make, rather than the ones he had already made. If he hadn’t squared up in this way to realities of competing in the age of mass-manufacturing, it’s likely that he would never have achieved the financial freedom to express what he calls his post-Enlightenment take on furnituremaking.

The state of things

Today, Matthew Burt is a recognised and well-respected brand, known for creating furniture that is neither gratuitously experimental or stagnantly nostalgic. Instead, it’s relevant to now. “I’ve always been attracted to simple furniture, designed by the everyman,” he elaborates. “For a zoologist, the best designer is natural selection. Look at a feather. Evolution has suited it perfectly to its purpose, and it appeals to me that, over generations, thousands of ordinary makers can improve a design until it’s difficult to improve upon.” The Windsor chair, he suggests, represents a pinnacle of evolution in much the same way as the feather.

This, then, is why Matthew has assembled his very own crew of ‘everymen’, collaborating with them to create purpose-built furniture for the present and beyond. And it’s with good reason that he resents the general lack of regard that’s accorded to today’s makers, whom he sees as the unsung heroes of the arts.

“The industrial revolution was started by philosophical artisans,” he contends, “who saw all cultural pursuits as important to the fabric of the nation. But the cultural significance of the maker” — with all his skills and knowledge — “is no longer valued in the sound-bite, quick-fix mentality of the modern era.”

quick-fix mentality of the modern era.” That said, Matthew has seen signs of improvement over the last 10 years. “Whatever you think of them, at least Labour said, ‘Let’s be proud of ourselves in our time’. I don’t think it was intentional, but they opened the door, they gave permission [for] a cultural shift in architecture, furniture, design.” In fact, Matthew might go so far as to say that the ebullient self-confidence that these disciplines now enjoy has almost made this a new Georgian age. Not that he’s looking back to past glories, mind: he’s out in the world, from Saudi Arabia to the States, helping to keep his vision for timber alive and relevant in a difficult and uncertain future.

It’s a task that isn’t without its doubts and uncertainties. “There’s intense anxiety about how we keep the show going,” he admits, “and regular three o’clock boardroom meetings with my wife.” Counterbalancing those doubts, though, is the ‘root and branch’ approach — what Matthew calls his ‘post-industrial means of making’. He hasn’t limited his vision for timber by restricting his ideas to himself and his own capacity to make. Instead, the extended self that is the designer-and-makers team combines a creative mind with a commercially viable body to produce a brand that’s not only greater than the sum of its parts, but which has both artistic and financial integrity.