We are an international team of custom furniture designers who design, engineer and deliver elegant, timeless, versatile furniture for notable buildings in places of learning, worship, culture, business & leisure.
Founded as an Arts & Crafts furniture maker in 1981 in London’s Covent Garden, we have evolved into the foremost design and engineering practice delivering complete projects and standard lines of world-class furniture that match the architectural style of iconic buildings in the USA, UK Europe, Middle East and China.
Working directly with blue-chip clients and leading design architects, we apply our knowledge of architecture, advanced spacial engineering and our deep research-based understanding of the operational needs of those who will occupy the spaces we furnish to engineer pieces intended to last multiple generations.
From classical to contemporary, we create timeless designs that read as a seamless part of the architecture they help to revitalise and bring to life. Flexibility and versatility are the central themes of our work, ensuring that spaces remain flexible and easily adapted for re-use and reconfiguration for decades to come. Sustainability, from the selection and use of sustainable and recyclable materials to circular business models, is integral to everything we do.
Our clients share an understanding of the difference between price and value. They invest for the long term, which ultimately carries a lower cost and a higher return.
2019 - Form wholly foreign-owned China subsidiary
2018 - Win 76 Trinity Place. US grows to 25% of our business
2017 - Keystone Academy, Beijing marks our first China project
2015 -
2014 - Major projects at Yale and Yale NUS Singapore
2013 - Yale School of Management with Foster+ Partners
2012 - Multiple
2011 - HM The Queen opens the Sainsbury Botanic Institute
2010 - Major expansion of client base in civic, worship and education
2009 - UK Supreme Court opened by HM the Queen
2008 - Theatre Royal, Bury St Edmunds and Chichester Cathedral
2007 - Unilever becomes a client. Win UK Supreme Court
2006 - 25th anniversary. 50th Oxbridge college
2005 - Freehold purchase of the studio at 182 Drury Lane
2004 - Corporate offices for BP
2003 - Supreme Court Library, Edinburgh
2002 - Increasing use of glass, stone, resins and other materials
2001 - Millennium altar, Bristol Cathedral
2000 - First spa furniture for the Mandarin Oriental
1999 - Relationships established with Bisley,
1997 - New British Embassy, Moscow
1996 - First standard range of meeting room tables and chairs developed
1994 - Adopts 100%
1993 - Achieves ISO 9001 certification
1992 - British Embassy, Buenos Aires. Merton College become a client
1991 - First Oxbridge commission (Corpus Christi College, Cambridge); first use of CAD
1990 - Establishment of
1987 - First adoption of outsourced production
1986 - Designs for John Lewis Partnership, Liberty’s, Heals, and GTC.
1985 - Formation of Luke Hughes & Co Ltd - custom furniture designers
