“When I was 9, I got a square piece of chipboard and I hammered four three inch nails into four straight white legs that I’d prepainted. And I carefully carried that to my mum’s home and presented her with this new afternoon tea table. My very first piece of furniture was born. My Dad was really nice. He said it was probably best placed in the corner. Because the legs were so very very wobbly. You’d have the say that was my beginnings of my love affair with furniture.
However, from high school I went on to become a Chef and I was particularly interested in the presentation of food. I found that I was a great chef presentation wise as my plates looked amazing. The food however, tasted horrible. I soon found a following of regular guests for my deconstructed apple crumble, with apples, nuts, cream, biscuits presented in an appetising dessert for the eye.
Needless to say I’d taken my keenness for great presentation of food to then became a cabinet maker. I spent 16 years at the bench on the tools making furniture. And I worked with someone who was doing a lot of restorations in antiques. That also gave me the ability to increase my knowledge of periods of furniture and styles of furniture. Unless it’s evoking emotion visually, I just think it’s just a functional piece, but it’s not a masterpiece. It wasn’t very long and I was absolutely hooked on design. For me it is about the joint and it is about the quality.
LOVE FOR DETAIL
Everybody in the family all knew that I was a kid that was always snooping around looking and finding things. I would never take everything but I knew where everything was. Eye and love of detail and development of tactile objects and interest started naturally at a very early age. Collecting antiques – first thing I ever collected Noritake tea set with a windmill set in the sunset scene. And to this day I still have that. Interesting that those things are still part of me. As a result for showing such love and passion for furniture as a boy growing up, I now hold inexcessive ten family pieces, some of them going back 6 generations.”
