The Survivor Sofa Story

I'm very much looking forward to this on Monday;

A documentary about pioneering design and recycling on Monday 14th December at 10pm on the Community Channel but if you're busy you can watch it here. It features my friends the lovely Urban Uphostery. See the trailer here.

TENT London

I really enjoyed TENT in the London Design Festival this weekend. It was good to meet The Rag and Bone Man and see his work in the flesh, I loved these metal coat hangers from golf clubs with lovely detailing. If you're looking for a present for a bloke......also check out his lighting and other metal adventures here.

I was super impressed by what the Urban Upholsterers have been up to. Andrea is very skilled at traditional upholstery techniques and he and Patrizia wanted to show the beauty of the inner workings. They've produced this sofa called the Baubau Sofa: it's a found piece (as always) and stripped down, repaired and then re-uphostered with no more padding than is necessary so you can see the history and the workings of the piece.

It's beautiful, I love it. You can see more much better photos than mine on their Facebook page. Watch the video of it at various stages, and see all their other recent developments.

Beloved Tools

I love to see the workshops of real artisans and I've just visited my industrious friends Urban Upholstery. I think their work space is even colder than mine! I also love to look at workshop tools and I'd admired a hammer Andrea had, it's the longest slimmest, most elegant hammer I've ever seen. 

It's specially for upholstery and Andrea has used it for decades and wonders how many pins it has served. He has bought a similar advance replacement but actually it doesn't compare well to the original's fine proportions.

I asked him if he had a favourite tool and apart from the hammer he is particularly attached to this webbing-stretcher. It has sentimental value too as it was made by his first teacher who he learned upholstery from in Italy and who's sadly no longer alive. So Andrea has used this all of his working life and re-upholstered the tool itself several times over as it's cover wears out.

Patrizia was busy deconstructing....

......and I want to show you a finished piece of theirs....

Follow their activities by visiting their BLOG here.