Luke Hughes (furniture designer)
Luke Hughes is an English furniture designer specialising in furniture for public buildings including Westminster Abbey.[1]
Career
[edit]Hughes was temporarily working as a carpenter on London building sites in 1979 when chosen to lead a design project for kitchen shelving, which led further to the refurbishment of the client's home library.[2] This was the first library project that led to a series of bookcase designs and installations for Inns of Court lawyers.[3] He set up his first company, Bloomsbury Joinery, in 1980 in Lamb's Conduit Street, Bloomsbury.[2]
Hughes is the founder and CEO of Luke Hughes and Company Limited,[4] which went out of business in May 2024. Luke Hughes’ early output consisted of furniture for the residential market.[2] The same period also saw Hughes’ short-lived engagement with designing for the retail market. This came in the form of the ill-fated Ovolo line of bedroom furniture, originally manufactured by a Birmingham reproduction furniture company, Juckes, and sold through Heal's, Liberty's and John Lewis.[citation needed] The line's failure to gain a foothold with the consumer forced a change to the targeting of institutional clients.[3] To that end, Hughes brought architect and former managing director of Cotswold Furniture Manufacturers, Gordon Russell, on board.[5]
Selected projects
[edit]- Chapel of the Resurrection, Valparaiso University, Indiana was furnished with an updated and re-engineered version of ‘the Coventry Chair’ designed originally by Richard "Dick" Russell in 1960.[6][7]
- St Giles Edinburgh – a new Holy Table in hand-tooled Carrara marble.[8][9][10]
- Sheffield Cathedral, stacking benches.[11]
- The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom The library houses 35,000 books in a space intended for less than 25,000.[12][13]
- The Sainsbury Laboratory, University of Cambridge Botanic Institute; LHCL devised a range of furniture for this, with stainless steel frames, leather upholstery and timber veneered workstations.[14]
- In 1997, the firm made a desk for the British Embassy Moscow.[15]
References
[edit]- ^ "Seats at the wedding". Old Pauline news. 2011. p. 87.
- ^ a b c Walker, Aidan (2020). Furniture in Architecture. Thames & Hudson. ISBN 9780500022542.
- ^ a b Steiner, Rupert (29 June 1997). "Carpenter carved out success by going against the grain". The Sunday Times.
- ^ "Luke Hughes & Company website". lukehughes.co.uk. Retrieved 21 June 2020.
- ^ Myerson, Jeremy (1992). Gordon Russell, Designer of Furniture. The Design Council of Great Britain.
- ^ "The Famous Cov chair is back". Coventry Telegraph. 1 July 2015.
- ^ "1960s Coventry Cathedral chair by Dick Russell goes back into production". Dezeen.com. 28 June 2015.
- ^ Newbury, Helen (April 2011). New Holy Table for St Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh. Church Building.
- ^ Cottrell, Stephen (24 June 2011). "A new generation raids the vaults". Church Times.
- ^ "St Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh". Ecclesiastical Architects and Surveyors Association magazine. 2011.
- ^ "RIBA Yorkshire Regional Awards". The Architects' Journal. 1 May 2015.
- ^ Miele, Chris (2010). The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom. Merrell. ISBN 9781858945071.
- ^ Engel, Matthew (20 April 2013). "British Institutions: The Supreme Court". Financial Times.
- ^ Mara, Felix (11 October 2012). "Sainsbury Laboratory, University of Cambridge, Stanton Williams". The Architects' Journal.
- ^ "Moscow 4: Construction of new offices 1996 – 2002". Room for Diplomacy. 5 March 2014. Retrieved 21 April 2021.
Further reading
[edit]- ‘Furniture in Architecture: The Work of Luke Hughes’ by Aidan Walker, Thames & Hudson 2020
External links
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