The Ultimate High Chair by Royal Approval

To celebrate the birth of HRH Prince George, The Worshipful Company of Furniture Makers ran a competition to “select a designer with the very best design to make a high chair celebrating excellence of British furniture design and craftsmanship”. Katie Walker one of our favourite furniture designers won it. As a stand holder upstairs in the contemporary section of our Midcentury Modern show this March 16th, you can understand how we whooped with delight. Katie was thrilled to be able to deliver the piece in person to Kensington Palace in February and, while photographs of the meeting with the Duchess of Cambridge were not permitted, Walker has been allowed to use one taken with her daughter in her studio, seen here. The chair is made in very pale rippled ash from a tree felled in the Longleat Estate in 2001 and finished with white tinted hard wax oil. The front legs and top rail of the backrest are steam bent so it curves around the body with the front leg of the chair flowing seamlessly into the other with a Scandinavian Nanna Ditzel-style feel. All the other curved elements are laminated from ash veneer or birch plywood. The Master at The Worshipful Company of Furniture Makers was delighted to receive a personal letter from the Duchess thanking the Company on behalf of Prince William and herself. “It was a very challenging brief – meeting the criteria laid out by British Standards for the design of such a piece whilst making it a beautifully ‘crafted’ object, says Katie who was awarded a ‘Bespoke Guild Mark’ back in December.
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