In many ways, I am quite happy for my furniture has to speak for itself, but here are some of the things that govern my approach to designing and making furniture.
Design
Much has been said about the fundamentals of design: form and function. For any particular design, whether it is for a building, a car or a piece of furniture, there is certainly no single "right" combination of these key elements - everyone will have their own idea of what constitutes a good design. However, I believe that every piece of furniture absolutely has to "work". This means that a dining chair must still be comfortable at the end of a leisurely meal with family and friends and it will not break if someone rocks back on it; it means that the surfaces of tables and cabinets will be essentially flat and without deliberate large gaps in them; it means that shelves will not flex under the weight of the very things they are intended to support. Does this mean, then, that all my work is heavy and over-engineered? Absolutely not: it means that the proportions of each piece are very carefully thought out and combined with appropriate materials and construction techniques to produce an end result that both "works" and that looks good, too. My goal is to design and build furniture that makes a strong visual statement without compromising on function.
Construction, materials and finishing techniques
I am able to apply a wide range of both tradition and modern techniques to the construction of a piece of furniture. My pieces are assembled using mainly traditional joints such as mortices and tenons, and all the dovetail joints used in my drawers and carcasses are cut by hand. I will use modern machinery when it makes sense to do so but I enjoy using hand tools and the final surfaces of all my pieces are always carefully finished using hand planes and a cabinet scraper.
I am very keen that all the timber and materials I use should come from sustainable sources and I prefer to use native species that are sourced locally, if possible. I restrict my use of more exotic hardwoods to thin veneers and inlays. These can be applied to man-made substrates like plywood to achieve the look and feel of "real" wood with a high degree of structural integrity and without undue environmental impact.
I believe that the finish that is applied to a piece of furniture should be just sufficient to protect the surfaces and to reveal the natural beauty of the wood. My finishes tend, therefore, to be "thin" compared to those on antique furniture and I use a variety of natural shellacs, oils and waxes to create them. I also use modern manufactured hardwax oil, polyurethane and acrylic products to create attractive but more resilient finishes when these are required.