Alfred Newall Furniture designer and maker, based in Sussex
It takes more time and imagination to make furniture that lasts a lifetime. Custom pieces help to promote longevity because clients are involved in the story from the start. The piece has an inbuilt attraction that, I think, helps to ensure it’s loved and looked after. That’s the difference between bespoke and the click-and-collect nature of buying today; having something made for you is an experience and the result is something to cherish forever.
As these pieces grow old, they show their age and improve, become part of someone’s life and gather an identity. Clients are sometimes alarmed when they see their new piece of furniture, but I explain to them that, like a new leather jacket that might be stiff and uncomfortable, furniture needs to settle before it fits in. That’s why we use historical finishes, such as wax and natural oil, which allow for the surface to change over time. Modern finishes look spick and span at first, but they don’t allow for an elegant ageing process and a piece will start to devalue in the same way as a new car. Good furniture, made to last a lifetime, is the opposite—it gets better with age.
What I think has been lost along the way is the deep knowledge of the property of timbers that, in the past, would be used for different purposes in the formation of a piece of furniture. For instance, a Windsor chair would be made using three or four types of wood to create strength. Once, this knowledge would have been universal among cabinetmakers, passed down from father to son or maker to apprentice. I’ve had to take a different route to acquire this knowledge and surrounded myself with the elder generation of cabinetmakers to learn from them directly.
Denne historien er fra June 08, 2022-utgaven av Country Life UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent ? Logg på
Denne historien er fra June 08, 2022-utgaven av Country Life UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på
Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
