The idea of The Art of Upholstery was born from the market demand for home made Scottish upholstery products. This gap in the market became apparent to us when the majority of U.K. furniture manufacturing companies including many local and national brand names, transferred their production to factories in China and Eastern Europe. They seem to have been seduced with the claim that this was the only way to continue to supply the public with affordable furniture. We see this claim as a great error as the control of the product is lost and the whole process inevitably leads to Manufacturing led design. This ultimately leads to customer disappointment. The opposite of this is what is most needed for competition that is Design led manufacture. This alone gives assurance of quality in production and is a tried and tested way to give customer satisfaction. Price while important is always less important than quality for success. Have a look at any of the multiple retail furniture shops and supermarkets today and you will see that all the sofas, chairs and suites are more or less the same with little variation.

We as a company have been proven right in taking this stance and ultimately our proposed means of correction, as the whole dubious process has since been almost totally disabled by the banking collapse upon whom the agents, manufacturers, retailers, Freight forwarders and government, all depended on for finance, and indeed the whole chain of logistics, which were needed to supply and satisfy this attempt at usurping furniture and other home products. Now China and others are looking for more money for their products the price of furniture will go up here in the U.K. as a whole. We believe that to respond to all of this there is now a requirement for upholstery manufacture to be localised once more. There is only one problem. The factories have gone the companies who owned them have burned their bridges and many of their once fine products have now been replaced with clones of lesser quality.

Because of this we decided to create a company that prides itself in making and promoting Design led Manufacture rather than Manufacturing led design. To achieve this we have created a unique tool to suit our purpose. The products you see at our show and in our portfolio are bench made upholstery products using tried and tested traditional craft methods, using materials such as jute and cotton webbing, hand springing, with fibre and hair fillings all hand stitched to form the desired shapes. In other words good quality upholstery materials and skills. This completely bespoke approach allows us to make furniture that is as unique today as it follows a bench mark and the traditional methods of upholstery as laid down by people such as Chippendale, Sheraton and Adams to be once more realised.

To achieve this we have taken some ideas from antiquity, modernised them by adding up to date anatomy and comfort and finally up to date fabrics and cosmetics, all within the fire and durability regulations to suit the modern home. Check out our portfolio and decide for yourselves. We are however not rigidly tied to the older methods. We also have a respect and an appreciation for modern ideas and technology if it is applied correctly. Anyone can see that we totally embrace this. The reason is we are a small company who can punch above our weight because of the way we use the technology as our slave and resist being a slave to the technology.

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