Behind Closed Doors Tom Faulkner

Focusing on the craft and the materials as much as on the design itself has allowed furniture firm Tom Faulkner to experiment, innovate and go from strength to strength.

- Gillian Welsh

Tom Faulkner has been making things all his life. The self-taught artist and designer became captivated by the possibilities offered by different materials, and in the early 1990s he began experimenting, setting up a workshop in his parents’ garden shed in Oxfordshire. Metal in particular held his attention: intrigued by its opposing qualities of strength and malleability, he started using it to make furniture. He’s still doing the same thing today, albeit on a much larger and more successful scale; the Tom Faulkner brand has a reputation for exquisite, original handmade pieces, many of them award-winning. Its collections have evolved to combine metal with marble, timber, glass and leather for interiors and corporate settings.

“We mainly use steel and bronze,” says Faulkner, “but there is something rather amazing about combining a strong material, like metal, with something softer or more delicate, such as fabric (most recently sheepskin), glass or bridle leather. Then there are materials like marble and wood that are naturally beautiful in their rawest form.”

Why does steel fascinate him so much? “Because it’s amazing! It’s a great material to work with because it’s flexible, forgiving and strong. You can bend it, roll it, weld it, cut it – it’s so versatile. I was inspired by the craftsmen I met when I first started to work with metal. I wanted to encourage and use their skills.”