10) Furniture Design

 

Luke Hughes on a bench
he designed for
The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

At the Palace of Westminster
with Sean Wong
& its archivist Dr Mark Collins
inspecting the palace’s major restoration project

In Covent Garden with Luke Hughes & Company
(2003-2009)

IMAGES COURTESY OF
LUKE HUGHES & COMPANY

10)  The Great Commissions of Luke Hughes – 

 

With major furniture commissions in 54 of the 68 Oxbridge colleges, countless museums, palaces, boardrooms and churches, it is highly probably that you have sat on a Luke Hughes chair or around a boardroom table without knowing it. Despite a scholarship to Peterhouse and subsequent History of Art and Chinese degree, Luke Hughes chose to become a furniture maker. But an accident climbing in the Himalayas necessitated a more intellectual approach that considered the true requirements of modern furniture design. He has since become a dominant figure in the British furniture world with his revolutionary mantra of “flexibility” and “practicality”, not to mention the phrase “fine architecture is grossly undermined by bad furniture”. This lecture shows what modern furniture requirements say about our society today and illustrates many of the fabulous commissions undertaken by Luke Hughes, many beyond the scrutiny of the public.