EP 2 Tom Faulkner

For someone whose work has taken him from Joshua Tree to Tokyo, whose collections carry the fingerprints of California boulders and Japanese lily pads, Tom Faulkner is, at his core, unapologetically English. “I travel the world spreading the Tom Faulkner name,” he says, “but there’s no greater feeling than coming home. London will always be that for me.” For Tom, different corners of the city have each played their part in his life, from Gray’s Antique Market near Bond Street, where he first glimpsed what a creative small business could look like, to a shop in East London where he sold his earliest designs, to the showroom he now keeps on Pimlico Road. But his sense of place reaches further than just the city. He has a house in Oxfordshire, close to his sister, where life moves at a different pace, and it isn’t far from here that he has placed the centre of his business. Tom is committed to manufacturing in Britain, and almost all of his furniture is made by hand in a workshop in Wiltshire. The site was once home to Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s railway coach-works, and something of the great engineer’s ambition still lingers.

Tom is someone who thinks carefully not just about home, but about the things we choose to live among. Everything that leaves his workshop is testament to one belief: that the world is better with beautiful things in it and a visit to his showrooms in Pimlico or New York will leave you in no doubt. These are pieces forged in steel, finished in metal powders, varnishes, and pigments with the same precision that goes into every weld, every line, every proportion - made to be looked at, and kept, for a very long time. They are also made with people in mind. Tom grew up in a large family - four siblings, twelve nephews and nieces - and life, as he knew it, was lived in the company of others. His furniture is made for exactly that. Dining tables, chairs, sofas, and more - each one designed for the kind of gathering where people sit down, stay longer than they planned, and conversation goes somewhere unexpected. “I’ve met people who bought a table from me twenty-five years ago,” he tells me, “who say we got it before we got married, and we’ve had so many stories around it.”

My own mother has a few Tom Faulkner pieces that have moved through houses with her over the years. When she finally downsizes, I know exactly what I'm putting my hand up for.