Innovative storage solutions for island lives...
If you would like to discuss a potential home (or shop) improvement, please contact me.
(Here is a portfolio of some of my island furniture to give you some ideas...)
If you would like to discuss a potential home (or shop) improvement, please contact me.
(Here is a portfolio of some of my island furniture to give you some ideas...)
Shop/gallery display
Kitchens
Storage/shelving
Bedrooms
Furniture
Decorative panels
THE STORY...
I became a furniture maker by accident really: an accidental kitchen builder; an accidental interior designer; an accidental shop fitter. I have no official training and it's certainly not as if I decided one day to set myself up in a van complete with a shiny logo on its side, an array of power tools and a pocketful of business cards. Instead, my apprenticeship was a 25 year hands-on, occasionally fractious, working relationship with my own house.
An accidental furniture maker... (photo portrait by Tom Dyson)
Living as a family of four (plus two annoying cats) in a tiny fisherman's cottage requires some ingenuity in the matter of storage. In this cramped and sometimes chaotic scenario, Feng Shui is not merely an esoteric philosophy of the abstract flow of energy within a building but an absolutely crucial real life mission to make every inch of space work for you in the most efficient way possible. Wellbeing is certainly at stake here - I find clutter and mess to be anxiety-inducing; the sense of not being able to find what I'm looking for absolutely scream-provoking. When all is ordered and everything has a rightful place, I am as relaxed as any Zen master.
Most of us don't have access to the vast, empty, minimalist interiors that we may fantasise about, but there is huge satisfaction in rationalising a small space. These days, I am more obsessed by George Clarke's Amazing Spaces (the programme where vintage caravans, garden sheds, treehouses, etc. are fitted out with all manner of ingenious space-saving contraptions) than I am with Kevin McCloud's Grand Designs and its celebration of oversized property porn.
Over the years I made bookshelves, cupboards, storage benches; anything to put stuff in... I constructed built-in children's furniture, adapting it for each phase of my kids' growing lives. I moved and rebuilt my kitchen in different parts of the house, seeking for the most efficient and best-looking option. Many things didn't work, or didn't look right, so I remade them, recycling and reusing the materials each time, usually after a few dissatisfied years of deciding I couldn't live with them. With each change, I learnt something new - definitely a laborious way of making progress - but a powerful and indelible series of lessons.
When I was approached to do my first job for someone else, whilst my initial reaction was incredulity and a hasty insistence upon maintaining my amateur status, I came to realise that, over the long years of DIY endeavour, I had assembled a range of skills, tricks and techniques that could have real practical applications to help other people who were struggling with clutter and inefficiency in their houses. It is always a source of satisfaction to me when I am able to improve the internal look and functionality of someone's home. After all, homes are - for those of us lucky enough to have them - emotionally crucial to our lives in so many ways.
Stylistically, I aim to blend island-sourced reclaimed and organic materials - driftwood, scrap timber, natural edge boards - with crisp, modern functional lines. It is important to me that each job I do has a personal identity reflecting the client, but the overriding design aim is always to declutter; to rationalise; to make the most of every inch of space in the cleanest way possible.
Most of us don't have access to the vast, empty, minimalist interiors that we may fantasise about, but there is huge satisfaction in rationalising a small space. These days, I am more obsessed by George Clarke's Amazing Spaces (the programme where vintage caravans, garden sheds, treehouses, etc. are fitted out with all manner of ingenious space-saving contraptions) than I am with Kevin McCloud's Grand Designs and its celebration of oversized property porn.
Over the years I made bookshelves, cupboards, storage benches; anything to put stuff in... I constructed built-in children's furniture, adapting it for each phase of my kids' growing lives. I moved and rebuilt my kitchen in different parts of the house, seeking for the most efficient and best-looking option. Many things didn't work, or didn't look right, so I remade them, recycling and reusing the materials each time, usually after a few dissatisfied years of deciding I couldn't live with them. With each change, I learnt something new - definitely a laborious way of making progress - but a powerful and indelible series of lessons.
When I was approached to do my first job for someone else, whilst my initial reaction was incredulity and a hasty insistence upon maintaining my amateur status, I came to realise that, over the long years of DIY endeavour, I had assembled a range of skills, tricks and techniques that could have real practical applications to help other people who were struggling with clutter and inefficiency in their houses. It is always a source of satisfaction to me when I am able to improve the internal look and functionality of someone's home. After all, homes are - for those of us lucky enough to have them - emotionally crucial to our lives in so many ways.
Stylistically, I aim to blend island-sourced reclaimed and organic materials - driftwood, scrap timber, natural edge boards - with crisp, modern functional lines. It is important to me that each job I do has a personal identity reflecting the client, but the overriding design aim is always to declutter; to rationalise; to make the most of every inch of space in the cleanest way possible.
AN ISLAND LIFE
Website photography by Rachel Lewin (An Island Wife)
Website photography by Rachel Lewin (An Island Wife)