inforume-co-uk — Fri, 02 May 2014 15:36:05 +0000

Okay yes it is true, I have been away. I could pretend that it was only a matter of days, just casually pick up where I left off but that would seem disingenuous, a bit like the guilty emails I send to my mother that read as a seamless spontaneous outpouring but actually take three disjointed weeks to write. The question of my absence, the where did you go, is moot. I could argue writer’s block, but in my experience there is no such thing, it is just a more creative way of saying lazy. So actually maybe it was writer’s block. Blogs are tricky, you start out with such ace reporter enthusiasm but quickly end up hack journalist, turn from writing because you want to toward writing because you have to. I never find writing to a deadline fun, it’s not meant to be I suppose, otherwise it would be called a sparkly line. The problem is good writing is hard work and time consuming. You can sit around waiting for pure inspiration to fall on your head, good luck with that, or you can get your hands dirty. But how do you nurture an idea without losing what lifted your eyes in the first place? Without effecting the outcome? How do you capture a spark in a jar? Sometimes I stalk a thought all over the place and when I finally catch up to it and I see it clearly for the first time we are both changed, the original notion and my intended representation of it altered. It can be unexpected but it is rarely unpleasant. Any observance changes outcome, this was something that was completely lost on star trek and their dogmatic insistence on the prime directive. I have never understood nature programs that watch animals in extremis and deny them assistance based on the idea that what we are watching is the natural process. Of course it isn’t. There is nothing natural about a couple of sweaty guys in a camouflaged tent filming a baby wildebeest’s increasingly futile attempts to escape a muddy pit, or a crocodile or a lion. The mere act of being there has changed the circumstances entirely. Saving an animal from certain death somehow goes against nature but recording its death doesn't? Save the wildebeest I say! We have a pet seagull. There I have said it. We intervened. A baby gull, mottled and flightless fell out of its nest and on to our 2nd storey windowsill where it got stuck. We could have ignored it, let it fade away, observed its travails through the window but no, instead we ignored the prime directive and got involved, fed it some chocolate brioche. Hey what do I know about a seagull’s diet and besides I was out of herring. We named him Sugs and he lived on our sill under our care until he fledged and moved to a roof across the road. He has visited our windowsill every day since and taps on the glass with his beak when he wants something. We exercise caution of course, as he is basically a psychopath with a pair of scissors but we are fond of him. He has a seagirl, Mugs and a family of his own now. He spends his days screaming at nothing, hovering into the wind and pooing from a great height on tourists. I don’t feel it was wrong to save him as it occurs to me that he is the very embodiment of a good idea and that raising a notion, even on an inappropriate diet of ham and cheese sandwiches is always better than letting it die.

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inforume-co-uk — Wed, 11 Dec 2013 13:36:08 +0000

I don't know if you watch Game Of Thrones but in it is a huge wall of ice called not unreasonably The Wall. It is a man and magic made folly, three hundred miles long, seven hundred feet high, forever looming. On this side a near insurmountable climb, on the other permanent winter. I have another name for The Wall. Christmas. Now don’t misunderstand me, I love Christmas, what is there not to love (insert favourite Christmas cliche here) but do we have to do it every year? I know it is important from a retail, I mean a religious point of view but couldn’t we sort of alternate? One year on one year off or maybe every four years. Oh yes, imagine the excitement, the preparations, the scale, all that pent up Christmas cheer. Though having said that my favourite Christmas cliche is that Christmas is for the children, I repeat it endlessly, how Christmas wouldn’t be the same without them (cheaper, quieter, more relaxing) that it is all worthwhile just for the look on their little faces when they stuff the ends of their stockings with unwanted oranges and walnuts and use them as maces. I would hate to have to explain to them that Christmas was now bi annual or every four years. I had a friend at school who was born on the 29th of february and his parents insisted that he only celebrate his birthday during leap years. I remember when I was twelve he was three, it didn’t make him very happy. But that’s just him and Christmas is bigger than one person, unless that person is Jesus of course. Children aside I really think every four years could work, it would be like the World Cup or the Olympics, we could have a committee, call it the IOC, (It’s Occasionally Christmas) we could even have host nations, everybody’s Christmas in one place, think how grateful santa would be. I know my parents would love it as when they say Christmas is for the children they mean me and they never know what to get me, except for book tokens. Okay confession, the whole every four years thing, I sort of have an ulterior motive, presents. It’s not that I am a Scrooge or anything it is that I have three sons of various ages with all the hand-me-down potential that creates and no longer have a clue what to get them. I am sick of buying the obligatory remote control something (cars, robots, helicopters, last year spiders) only to watch them careen into each other or the skirting or grannies swollen ankles because they don’t have multiple radio channels as promised on amazon. I blame Steve Jobs. Ever since my boys got ipads buying presents has become a near impossibility, you can’t buy them music or a music player or a portable tv or a camera or a game machine or games or DVD’s or fish tanks. You can’t buy them dictionaries or calculators or planetariums. You could buy them an app, but you can’t wrap an app, can’t really put it under the Christmas tree, besides most of them cost 69p, ‘Oh thanks Dad, Angry birds in Helsinki, how much did that set you back?’ We are trying tennis racquets this year, three of them, because you can’t hit a tennis ball with an ipad, well you can but backhand is difficult. My boys don’t play tennis, not yet, but we live in hope, don’t we all? So go on, have a Merry Christmas and if you too are struggling to find the perfect gift don't worry, I have a shop.

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inforume-co-uk — Mon, 21 Oct 2013 11:51:16 +0000

I like my fabric plain. Not boring plain, texture is good, handle, nap, colour but I have always felt that patterned fabric overwhelms form and dates rapidly. This is especially apparent if a chair or sofa has beautiful proportion then very often the line that makes them desirable is obscured by converging, colliding pattern. You can always dress a plain sofa up if you wish, with patterned cushions or throws, things that you can change at will, but try changing the look of a patterned sofa and you will be on a hiding to nothing. If a chair or sofa has good proportion then it has the human body to thank for it, after all their primary function is to compliment our shape and look good doing it. Perhaps this is why I also like my skin plain. Not boring plain, texture is good, handle, nap, colour but I have always felt that patterned skin overwhelms form and dates rapidly. Don’t misunderstand me, I am not a tattoo hater, I accept that they can be exciting, exquisitely drawn and poignant, it’s just that I have never believed that they improve the work of art that they are applied to. The human body is not a blank canvas, it is life writ large, blemishes, scars, stretch marks, the only tattoos you ever need. The human body is on a journey but tattoos anchor it, fix it in a particular time and place. You will change, your skin will change your mind and opinions will change but your ink won’t. Well, it will fade and go fuzzy but it will still be there when you are old. Not that I have ever found a tattoo on old flesh especially unpleasant, it is no worse than a tattoo on young flesh. I know for a lot of the tattooed that that is the whole point, a tat is a skewer upon which the shish-kebab of life is speared and that is fine if you are in the armed forces or in prison or in the sons of anarchy or at a point in your life that should be remembered for all time. But remembrance is rarely the reason that a young man turns one of his arms into a mock tribal popsock or why a celebrated woman has her entire bottom reimagined as a rose bush. Tattoos have become self fulfilling prophecies, predictions that come true simply because the prediction was made, with often no greater reason for existing than themselves. They are permanent but brought into being through impermanent sentiment, they are that most curious of contradictions, enduring fashion, the physical equivalent of wearing last seasons clothes. Forever. Which only adds to the mystery of why women want them. Whereas tattoos only fail to improve the male body what they do to the female body is completely different. They declassify it. There was a reason why the tattooed lady was a fairground attraction, her tattoos gave men a legitimate excuse to stare, lustfully, disapprovingly. Some men think they still do. What is inevitable though is that at some point, man or woman, you will look at yourself and say ‘what was I thinking?’ Not because the tattoo in itself is awful but because it is not an improvement, no one is improved by a pattern, we are not leopards, the fabric of our bodies should be plain. If you are thinking of getting a tattoo buy a cushion.

Tattoo aversion therapy

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inforume-co-uk — Wed, 09 Oct 2013 14:00:17 +0000

icandy

Fashion is unfamiliarity. The reason that fashion doesn’t last is simple. It preys on a very basic human mechanism. Curiousity. We are hardwired to notice the unfamiliar, for good reason. Can I eat it? Can I sleep with it? Can it kill me? Once we have identified it as a rock, a sheep and a tree we lose interest. This doesn’t stop the fashion industry from continually redesigning rocks, sheep and trees though. And when I say the fashion industry I don’t just mean clothes, I mean everything from cars to HP sauce, everything that is old is new again. But this is not always a good thing. Sometimes familiarity breeds content. We all have things that we love forever, a toy, a pair of shoes, an old motor bike something by Fleetwood Mac. Things that we have recognised for what they are. This is what I try to do with my furniture, make it fashion proof. Anticipate the end of the journey from the beginning, I design things to last not only in time but also in spaces. It is a trait I look for in everything, will I still love it tomorrow. My phone is a good example. I still have a 4s because it is better looking than the 5. I loved my phone as it was, it was a friend I wanted to keep. I loved iOS 6 too, it was way beyond fashion. I loved its personality, its sense of humour, its pinstripe suit, the way it looked real, like you could press or pluck or turn it. Not because I am too stupid to recognise a plainer button but because of its extravagance and because the dreaded minimal ultimately means we all end up living in the same empty concrete box, albeit one with a pastel paint scheme.

I guess I can understand the logic, they want to tempt younger users, cool and groovy types, less fuddy duddy more faddy daddy. Old lamps for new. It explains the 5c which looks like it has been designed to tempt children into a gingerbread house but it does somewhat ignore an ever increasing but terribly unfashionable part of the apple user base. The old. My father is 83. Unlike his ipad he has left the pursuit of the perfect model far behind and becomes slightly more inferior with every update. Having just watched him trying to navigate his way around his freshly skinned device by touching every single word on a page on the off chance it did something I felt like asking mister Jony Ives to step outside. It was a nice night. There were stars. My father calls his home button the ‘going home button’ and his homepage his front room and in his front room he had furniture, after an hour with iOS 7 he said to me ‘put the old furniture back would you son’. Sorry dad but this is the new world where the furniture is all modern, hard, where you sit on your bones. I have taken to calling my 4s the reformation phone because it looks like a sacked abby with all its beauty stripped bare by the iconoclast general, the man who took the fun out of functional. An austere phone for austere times. My dad will get used to it, we all will, we will barely remember how lush the interior once was, how finely tooled, how upholstered and any further changes will be seen as progress. Quick march. As Lindsey Buckingham from that Fleetwood Mac once said. Never going back again.

Will you still love me tomorrow?

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inforume-co-uk — Fri, 27 Sep 2013 10:29:36 +0000

Designers wear beards. There I’ve said it, I wasn’t going to because I’m not sure anyone else has noticed. It used to be those skinny rectangular glasses and scarves in summer but now it is beards. I don’t mean goatees, I mean proper, full on, is that a robin I see nesting, beards. I’m talking about men designers of course, well mostly. They can be tangly, or boxy or straggly as long as they are manly, serious, has anyone seen my pipe beards. Just got back from Tent London, via Super Brands and Design Junction. Three major shows in The London Design Festival, lots of capital letters in the capital city and what did I learn? Designers wear beards, the kind that draw attention on aircraft. I kept on getting distracted, I wanted to look at the things on display, I had come a long way, well from Hove at least (if you’re wondering it’s the posh bit that Brighton is attached to) but every show was like a ZZ Top convention. I wanted to run amok with a pair of shears, the common or garden variety, not because I meant them harm but because I can’t grow one myself and I’m a designer dammit! I tried to get some photos instead, but bearded designers are shy creatures, like Ewoks. At one point I saw three in a group, all facing inwards, a sort of bearded circle, I couldn’t help thinking how magnificent they looked, I kept expecting the beards to get together, to knit, to weave, the way they waggled they seemed to be having a conversation of their own, any moment they are going to leave, I thought, go off on their own and design something. Maybe that is it, maybe that is the secret, designers don’t wear beards, beards wear designers. It’s the beards that do all the work, the designers are just for cover. Perhaps I don’t need one after all.

They probably shouldn’t have made it but I’m glad they did.

But enough about designers lets talk about design, lots and lots of design. The London Design Festival is difficult to nail down, it used to be London Design Week, but so huge has it become that it is now impossible to squeeze it into just seven measly days. With great size comes great danger, bigger is not necessarily better if the good stuff has just been spread more thinly. I wanted to remain positive, I was under orders not to slip into negativity, don’t look at everything I was told, so I tried not to but I still feel I saw too much. After a while it becomes difficult to separate the life less ordinary from the lifeless, ordinary, you develop fatigue and your critical faculties start to falter. At one point I found myself admiring a table with four fire axes for legs. What is wrong with you? Enquired Libby. Well, it would be useful in a fire, I replied in my defense. Things were almost universally well constructed, a paean to the laser cutter and CNC router, but much of what was on offer was made simply because it is now so much easier to make it. This is not reason enough, where was the daring? Where was the verve? I am a big fan of the ill advised, partly I guess because I can never afford to be. I love it when someone designs something that is too stupid to exist, then builds it anyway. Sometimes design should be about crazy, that is where the wonder comes from, often it won’t work but every now and then something that appeared completely daft on paper will make sense of the world. I used to work in theatre as a props maker and one of my favourite directors would create plays of such joyful, riotous, bonkersness that two out of three would not succeed. One out of three however would be utterly brilliant and for years he was allowed to fail because the payoff would be worth it. But then the management changed and ushered in a new age of pragmatism, every play had a financial target, there were season ticket holders and sponsors to keep happy, so everything became even, became safe, became ordinary. Perhaps that is where we are now, the corporatisation of London Design Week and never has it been more important that every once in a while someone gets to build a table with fire axes for legs.

This just in: No beards spotted at Decorex. Make of it what you will.

A bucket of blood from Timorous Beasties.

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inforume-co-uk — Thu, 19 Sep 2013 11:57:34 +0000

Working with family is never easy but when you are running a family business it is difficult to avoid. Not only do I have a brother as a main supplier but I also work with my wife and my two youngest sons are currently in the shop basement stuffing cushions (my oldest, the nine year old, has conveniently decided that he is going to be a lawyer and helping out at the family firm would be exploitation and demonstrate an unacceptable lowering of aspiration). I wouldn’t change it though, working with family is a privilege and you get to sleep with the boss guilt free. Once you learn to navigate and negotiate, instigate and ingratiate you’ll be fine, there are however lines to toe, lines in the sand and lines to be drawn. Here are nine, not because I couldn’t think of ten but because I could have thought of thirty.

1: Don’t work with family.
No really don’t. Well okay then if you must.

2: Never tell your wife that you are in charge.
I know how it is, you think you started the company, you think everything good is your idea, your wife merely works in the office, does a bit of admin. Clearly if the distinction needed to be made it would be you, alpha male, who is in charge, who is the boss. Er, no. Sorry. A successful family business partnership only works if it is that, a partnership. So take a deep breath and accept the inevitable. You work for your wife.

3: Don’t let your work follow you home.
The internet is wonderful, it will probably be seen as being as important as the wheel, the printing press, bubblegum that doesn’t stick to your face, you are using it now and didn’t give it a second thought and that is my point. Beware the internet. There is a creeping insidiousness lurking just below the surface, something that wants all your free time and no, I’m not talking about all those flesh coloured pages, I mean the cloud. I know it is odd for a cloud to lurk but that is the beauty of the name, it sounds all floaty and fluffy, somewhere above our heads, just a few doors down from heaven. But DANGER! The cloud is sticky and dark. It follows you everywhere, knows where you are going, when you go home it will be there already, wafting work under your nose, tempting you to look whenever you loiter anywhere near a computational device. Browsing Amazon? Oh I’ll just check work. Netflix in bed? Better check work. Dumb ways to die on the loo? Must check work. Resist the cloud. Rename it if you have to, something dangerous. Ebola. Rabies. I call it Lady Jane Grey after a pet rabbit that nearly bit the tip of my finger off when I was eight. Proper deadly.

4: Kiss your wife/husband/boyfriend/girlfriend goodbye in the morning.
It might seem a little odd kissing someone goodbye when you are leaving together but honestly it is essential. The goodbye kiss is one of the best, it is redolent with the sweet sorrow of parting, it anticipates separation, reunion and the kiss hello. Just because you are travelling in the same car, train, pedalo doesn’t mean you should miss out. So take her in your arms and kiss her like you mean it, like you are leaving, like there is a good chance she may never see you again. Well, at least until you get to the bottom of the stairs.

5: Know what you are doing and do what you know.
Understanding exactly what is and isn’t your role is very important. In order to feel fulfilled your time must be full, filled. Make sure your occupation is occupying, that you are doing things that make good use of your strengths but don’t hog all the fun jobs, especially if another family member can do them better than you. This however should not be used as an excuse to offload less enjoyable aspects of your work and the idea that you can just fob them off on your wife is unacceptable, she will/did notice and rows will/did ensue. All unpleasantries have to be shared. Don’t look at me like that, I didn’t say they have to be shared equally.

6: Housework is unpaid overtime.
Just because you clean the shop occasionally does not exempt you from cleaning at home. I tried it once, I didn’t get away with it. Nor is making sandwiches for your pack lunch the same as cooking a sunday roast. And leaving work at three to collect the children, make their dinner and entertain them should never be considered skiving off early. I only mention it for the sake of clarity, these thoughts have never occurred to me. Well, apart from the first one obviously and possibly the one about pack lunches but I do make very nice sandwiches.

Origami Ewok Army

7: Children are silent partners.
Well not exactly, children are rarely silent. At least not mine. Our house is a constant cacophony of mock outrage, the wisdom of buzz lightyear, the spit and purr of light sabres and the war cries of the origami ewok army. My desk, from where I dispense my good works, is in the hall, the same place as the scalextric circuit, the crossbow range, the space hopper run and the lego minifigure flying fox. My three boys are also locked in a lifelong competitive son contest, which can get rowdy. For the sake of diplomacy I make it clear that my eldest is my favourite, unless he’s not around in which case I lean towards the middle, though my three year old has a certain charm and can stack the lowest of shelves. What I am trying to say is in that the children are part of the business too, they may not have a say directly but they have massive influence, if not for them then for whom? Don’t let your work consume you, that’s what your children are for.

8: Don’t confuse family with family business.
Obviously not everyone in a family business has children so if that is you feel free to ignore number seven but what everyone in a family business does have in common is family. Protect it. Never let work become personal. It is a line that is easy to cross especially with the strains and stresses that currently present themselves but it is very difficult to step back from. Have a business relationship as well as a personal relationship. Keep them separate, compartmentalise them. This doesn’t mean that you have to ignore the advantages of working with family members it just means that when things go wrong you treat each other in a professional manner. No screaming and shouting or shooting, this is soft furnishings not the Godfather.

Tom Hagen: Your father wouldn't want to hear this, Sonny. This is business, not personal.
Sonny: They shoot my father and it's business, my ass.
Tom Hagen: Even shooting your father was business, not personal, Sonny.

9: A cock up shared is a cock up halved.
But only if you admit to it.

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inforume-co-uk — Wed, 11 Sep 2013 11:00:41 +0000

Inspiration is a funny old thing, subject as it now is to the prosaic. Even the word itself has become pedestrian. No longer the sole province of divine influence, inspiration can now refer to the inexplicable impulse you felt just before covering your entire car in pink polyester fur. You can even blame it for the irresistible urge to have a weird flightless bird tattooed on your neck or the writing of a love poem to your girlfriend’s mother. Inspiration can be that versatile and that uninspiring. Even so I must confess to struggling with the occasional bout. I love the feeling as an unbidden idea rises in my mind like some ever expanding bubble from the deep. POP! True most of them are rubbish, but occasionally I will have one that doesn’t involve tortoises and roller skates. The Fret cabinet is one of them.

A few months back whilst going to the park with the boys I passed a house with the type of decorative concrete block wall that was popular in the seventies. I was immediately arrested and stood staring at the pattern, I had seen it somewhere before. ‘What do you think of that?’ I asked Jake the elder. ‘Horrid.’ He said with the conviction of all of his nine years. I nodded and walked on. A couple of days later I was stuck on a new design for a sideboard when the pattern on the blocks just jumped into my head. After a little research and being very pleased with its origins I came up with a design for a cabinet incorporating it in the doors. I showed it to my brother, he wasn’t sure. ‘I’m not sure,’ he said. ‘It reminds me of something.’ I nodded sagely. ‘It’s Moorish.’ I told him. ‘What, like a chocolate digestive.’ He replied. I smiled wanly and went on to explain that I meant the Moors, you know Mosaics? Granada? Alhambra Palace? The most beautiful building in the world? He looked at me doubtfully, then shook his head. ‘Nah, I know where I’ve seen it,’ he said. ‘Nanny Baker’s front wall.’

A beautiful hand made and hand painted cabinet inlaid with Moorish frets in the doors and ends, designed by Richard Paul Baker. The pattern a reoccurring motif, surfaced again in the seventies most notably in decorative concrete block walls one of which provided the inspiration for this cabinet.

The range of cabinets are produced using an MDF carcass, laser cut frets inlaid in lacquered doors and ends and hand turned solid timber legs. The cabinet body has a finished inset back so that it can be used as a room divider. Each cupboard has a single, adjustable shelf and the tall cabinet has two. Available in white satin lacquer or in a limited colour of your choice. All Fret cabinets are made to order. Please allow twelve weeks.

To purchase or enquire about this piece please feel free to email us at [email protected] or call us on 01273 777 810 to discuss delivery or if you feel like an adventure why not visit our lovely showroom at Rume, 54 Western Road, Hove, BN3 1JD.

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inforume-co-uk — Wed, 04 Sep 2013 10:00:44 +0000

Having not wanted it because I thought it would be rubbish I have been convinced by an overwhelming number of women (two) that it would be a good idea to have the inside of our Hove store Googlified. Googlification is when a very nice chap takes loads of photos of the store, stitches them together and creates our own little street view but inside our shop. You can see why I thought it would be rubbish because it sounds like embarrassingly large pants. And it might well have been but Mike (Pageturner Photography) has done a very nice job and left me rather pleasantly surprised. Of course I have had to suffer a certain amount of I told you so, eat a little humble pie and write ‘I am not always entirely correct’ one hundred times. But that’s okay because in this case I admit I was wrong. Googlification is ace. You can swoosh and swoop from one end of rume to the other, you can zoom in and out and even observe a large bald man with a fuzzy face drink a cup of tea. Isn’t technology marvellous. Anyway here it is below, (yes that’s me pretending to do some work) dive in and be transported, come inside, it’s just like being here, only not.

(if no image is visible try refreshing the page)

View Larger Map

Visit us at 54 Western Road, Hove, BN3 1JD

Images courtesy of Mike Page - Pageturner Photography

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inforume-co-uk — Sat, 31 Aug 2013 10:00:29 +0000

There follows a little digression. It was meant to be nine tips on buying a sofa but as per usual something strange happened on the way to the topic. There are still nine things but they are less than succinct and probably don’t contain anything like enough keywords. Helen is losing patience with me. With any luck there is some useful stuff buried beneath the puff and I promise that I will attempt to do a proper sofa buying guide at some as yet unspecified time in the future. Well, I promise to try. Who knows, I will probably end up talking about horses.

1. Not all furniture is created equal.
Making beautiful furniture beautifully in England is not easy. In fact it is rather tricky. Sofas especially. The idea that a sofa is a disposable item has permeated pretty much every level of society. Sofas are things that are always half price, on sale, buy one get one free. This has been achieved at a cost, basically the vast majority of sofas are not fit for purpose, unless that purpose is to last eighteen months and to sign you up for a decade of interest free credit. If the price of a sofa seems too good to be true that is because it is, the only reason you should buy it is that you want somewhere uncomfortable to sit. You will also have to keep your eyes closed and make sure that you can get off it and leave the room without looking back.

2. A sofa is for life, not just for Christmas.
Beautiful rooms deserve beautiful sofas. Every component that goes into an exceptional sofa should be exceptional. Design, materials, skills. I know this makes them more expensive and not everyone can afford a rume sofa but I truly believe that some things are worth saving up for. But then I would say that. Our business model is a teensy bit mad, because we build everything to last I usually only get to see my furniture customers once, they might come in and buy a cushion or something but as far as the sofa or chair is concerned they already have one (or two, sometimes five) and don’t need another. Our repeat business comes from them telling other people about us, repeatedly. Because word of mouth is everything we have to constantly exceed expectation. We are only as good as people’s opinion of us.

3. Chairs are a bit like guns.
In much the same way that every journalist likes to think they have a book in them so designers of just about every stripe like to think they have a chair in them. They don’t. Whereas it is pretty easy to design something esoteric and eye catching, something that might win a nominal design award or get a local boy done good article in the paper it is incredibly difficult to come up with something original, comfortable, and beautiful that not only works but is worth putting into production. Chairs are a bit like guns. How many sci fi movies have you seen where the guns are inexplicably huge, or misshapen and unwieldy. Guns are gun shaped for a good reason, they have to fit in your hand, ergonomics places an irresistible force on design, well it does if the gun has any chance of being held or fired or if the chair has any chance of being sat on.

4. A chair is not a narrow sofa.
One of the wonderful things about a good chair design is that it will nearly always make a good sofa. If however you design the sofa first don’t expect it to make a good chair. It is one of the reasons why the Acronyms have such hideous chairs, they are only interested in selling huge sofas, so they design them first then compress them if something smaller is required. Proportion is everything, and it is much easier to work out on a human scale, I do this by putting a human in it. A pretty one. If a chair design makes my wife look anything less than gorgeous I know I have a problem. Actually I’m not sure that is possible which is why I also use my brother, if I can make him look good then I know I have cracked it.

5. Chipboard is not a hardwood.
It all starts with the frame, the skeleton upon which success or failure hangs. I grew up in a frame shop, (not literally, I’m not Dickensian) and over the years developed an eye for a goodly frame. Oo er missus. Being able to read a frame is very useful, it allows you to picture how the piece will look when it is finished. It is something a good upholsterer can do instinctively and taking his advice when working on a prototype can help you avoid expensive mistakes. Frames can be made of many materials and often are but hardwood is best, the more the better. Beech is still without equal and when it is glued screwed and dowelled, almost indestructible. When buying a sofa or chair ask what the frame is made of, if you're told beech ask how much of it. Less scrupulous furniture companies have been known to call a composite with a couple of beech rails a hardwood frame. Chipboard is not a hardwood.

6. The meat on the bones.
If the frame is the skeleton then the upholstery is the meat on the bones, the fabric is the skin, you get the idea. It is also what you see, that beautifully crafted frame disappears from view along with most of the credit for it. Traditionally frame makers and upholsterers don’t really get on (In fact each have a warring guild and have been pitched against other in arcane battle for generations). Of course turning a reserved frame into a poised piece of upholstered furniture requires skill and recondite manipulation of time and space. Despite being the son of frame maker I am still in awe of the process that turns the ascetic into the aesthetic. Watching the naked tracery of timber take on substance and finery before your eyes is wonderful, if a design turns out like you expected it is even better.

7. The past is contemporary.
As there is no such thing as time (long story) the past does not really exist except as something to beat ourselves up with. We were great once blah blah blah. If history has taught us anything it is that we never seem to learn from history. We never learn anything from the future either, like tomorrow it never arrives, we don’t get to go there whether we have access to a supermassive black hole, wormhole, mystic sinkhole or not. All we can do is remember or anticipate in the right here and very now. I think it is enough and it brings me to my point. Hooray. A lot of our sofas have distant design antecedents but as the past is something we can only experience in the moment it makes our furniture simultaneously persistent and brand spanking new. We are the very definition of cutting edge yet not ashamed to admit that edge can sometimes be found on the blade of a Victorian cut throat razor.

8. Chesterfields are all boys.
Everybody accepts that ships are girls, possibly cars too, well definitely volvos, I have even given a couple of my more feminine sofas girl’s names but I draw the line at Chesterfields. Chesterfields are all boys, even when they are covered in pink velvet they still dream of being in a gentleman’s club supporting the indelicate derriere of some pipe puffing master of the universe. Another single malt please George. Consequently Chesterfields deserve muscular names, Smithfield, Pelham, Havelock not chloe, janet or amelie, giving a Chesterfield a girl’s name shows a complete misunderstanding of their nature, of their innate blokiness. Giving a Chesterfield a girl’s name would be liking calling the QE2 Ralph.

9. Furniture is fun.
I have sometimes been accused of being a little too irreverent in my witterings, been told that people will only grasp the magnitude of what we do if I affect the requisite sonorous tone. But I can’t help feeling that this misses the point, owning our furniture is fun. I know the buying part can cause all sorts of stress, there are always serious questions to ask when you are spending more money than is strictly necessary but once the decision has been made I like my customers to relax and to begin to gather a sense of expectation. The road can sometimes be a little bumpy, fabrics can be delayed, build times can stretch, there are occasionally delivery problems, but I know once the furniture arrives and they see it is what I promised it will put a huge smile on their face. I know that there will never be regret, that when they are still sitting on it ten years later they will think of it as a bargain, that they won’t grow bored with it just because they have had it for a while. It makes me happy to know that our clients love their sofas and that over time they have become just like one of the family. Only better looking.

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inforume-co-uk — Thu, 15 Aug 2013 10:00:31 +0000

If Cornwall didn't exist then someone would have to invent it. God maybe. It is a place of ineffable beauty, a land of savage seascape, rolling hills, cumulus woodland, hidden churches and horizontal weather. It has some of the most gorgeous empty beaches you will ever see, assuming a local tells you where they are. There are pathways that follow myriad pasture into gloaming dell before rising into the blinking brilliance of an unexpected shoreline. It has spectacular cliff side towns that cling like kittiwake nests whilst ancient harbour walls push out into cresting seas like the bows of stone galleon. There is the lazy turn of hypnotic turbine juxtaposed with the diligent death of glorious industry, flashes of silver light on captured quarry, discarded pyramids of slag turned to grass with time, tin mine shafts just a few degrees off vertical so that if a man fell he wouldn't hit the man below him on the ladder. Those Victorians knew a thing or two about health and safety. This startling mysterious land is real and believe it or not is actually connected to England, you can drive there, in a car. It is just down the road. In the back of the wardrobe. Like Narnia. I once went to a butchers’ shop in a field and got mugged by a peacock for goodness sake.

I have just spent six days in this wondrous place with my picturesque wife and three perfect sons. It wasn’t by accident as my wife’s family hails from a small village just outside Truro called St Clement so we have been going there for years. Despite its loveliness I had always felt this was largely for the sake of convenience and as such I didn’t engage as much as I might. Holidays with young children are never easy, in truth I often find them more exacting than the work they replace. I have always envied the holiday dads, the ones who can simply shake their work off as if they have been turtle waxed. My work worries are like Manuka honey, but without the alleged health benefits. This time though was different, I went with my eyes and heart open and sort of fell in love. It can be difficult having a relationship with Cornwall, the roads can be a nightmare, the town centres rammed and the weather is famously weathery, every type of weather known to man crammed into a few hours. Libby and I got married in St Clement and the whole morning before the ceremony it rained, biblically. Drops so large they could have been confused for crystal decanters. I stood in the deluge, soaked to the skin and cursed the falling sky. But then an hour before kick off it stopped and the sun broke through and we walked to the church with the whole village jet washed, smelling of life and gently steaming. I think I may have always secretly loved the place but this time sitting on the warm sand, slowly developing a singlet shaped tan, watching my boys tangle with a teflon boogie board I felt the stress that always dogs me on holiday melt away to be replaced by a longing fulfilled. Cornwall loved me back.

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