Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
In close-nailed furniture, if the nails used are identical they have been manufactured industrially, which implies a date after 1850.
I made an urban-looking bicycle that could stand up to potholes. Of course, it was stolen instantly - proof of the genius of its design.
Some of my best moments have been in friends' libraries. They give you a sense of quiet, well-being and order that a media room does not.
A lot of my pieces have involved teamwork, but hopefully they've inspired people to make things - that inspiration would be a great legacy.
I've seen that, over the centuries, India has still got its passion and its soul. Wherever you go, people have such inner strength and beauty.
I reckon if you stick to the same thing every day for lunch when you are traveling, you know where you are. And it is one less decision to make.
Californians are not so precious about their antiques, not so nervous about what others will think if they mix classic with modern, old with new.
My grandmother started my interest in secret doors, trying to find things she lost, and we found an old letter in a great bookcase with a round facade.
My father and I share a passion for how things work, which in my case took the form of schoolboy fascination with machines and mechanical contraptions.
It's far nicer to congregate around a card table than a television. It takes me back to my childhood, when we'd play family card games like Racing Demon.
My dining room table is just a huge, great thick slab of oak on a beautiful frame. Whenever people come to supper I invite them to carve their name in it.
My design teachers were teaching us how to mass-manufacture; how to create something, but it's not lasting - it's always about the next trend, it's the next thing.
A lot of the design courses in schools and colleges don't incorporate very much making, and a lot of the making courses incorporate too much technology and computers.
There is something reassuring about British-made products and their inventiveness and ingenuity, their creative spirit and eccentricity and their British wit and charm.
There are so many super yachts being built nowadays. I don't know where the people go with them. Because the people who can afford them haven't got the time to use them.
There was a time when craft used to mean anything but the considered, stylish or academic. It was a term of derision. The 'craft fair' on the village green was to be avoided.
My parents had this extraordinary circle of friends. My father would be photographing somebody every day, someone from the world of the arts, a politician, a musician, a sportsman.
I love wood. I love its permanence, its way of changing hue over the years, its way of expanding and contracting, of moving or aging and growing better and more beautiful with time.
My teaching was primarily focused on making, it wasn't about the pounds, shillings and pence. I remember being in college and being in business and there was just a weekend in between.
If you cut me open, you would find bits of me looking at things with an aesthetic eye, also with a historical eye. But mostly at the way things have transported themselves through time.
Bedales was perfect for my sister and me. Very open. Very few rules. No uniforms. Co-educational. And very little of 'You have to do this like this.' You very much controlled your education.
I'm extremely proud of my relations and my heritage and my family. That's one side of my life, and my work is the other side of my life, and... I've always tried to keep them, you know apart.
In an ideal world, you would have his-and-hers bathrooms and his-and-hers dressing rooms, complete with a single bed where the Mrs. need not be woken up when there's a 7 o'clock flight to catch.
Someone did once bow to me, and my mother immediately told them off. Although whether she was prompted by the breach of protocol or the fact I enjoyed it a little too much, I really couldn't say.
We are not training crafts people as we used to do. We're not giving people the chance to learn. Education has become very academic. There's nothing wrong with academic for some people, but not all.
We are no longer teaching young people to make things that are beautiful and of very high quality. We are not giving them the chance to learn how to create artefacts to a high standard of design and workmanship.
I remember being taken to visit houses by my father, who then tested my powers of observation by expecting me to describe the things I had seen... Unusual furniture always seemed easier to remember than other things.
I remember my father making many things. Once we made a shed, and a man in the village came along to help. After a couple of glasses of beer, he said, 'Give me a tape measure and I'll make it by eye,' and the result was so beautiful.
Children love making things, but they don't get the same opportunities now as practical subjects seem to be sidelined. I would love to see schools offering much more in the way of practical subjects to let children see what they can do.
Usually, when people think of marquetry, they think of Dutch 17th-century furniture with inlaid flowers and jugs. Our goal is to break down the barriers between old and new, to combine traditional marquetry techniques with a modern idiom.
When I left Parnham aged 18, I could easily have ended up twiddling my thumbs in a workshop all week. But I lucked out and found an agent who immediately got me work and before long there was enough demand for my furniture to start a shop.
The school I attended, Bedales, was fortunate to have been built by a leading light from the Arts and Crafts Movement in the 1890s. It contained a beautiful library, made originally of green oak and constructed with the help of the children.
Ideally you should try to buy upholstered items that have retained their original fillings of horsehair, wool or down, because they provide a much more satisfying shape than when they have been replaced with foam rubber or other modern materials.
My parents are very supportive of my work. It's my father who encourages me to keep going and my mother she's very proud. She's keen that I do something creative rather than just printing money in some city bank, you know which I couldn't have done, anyway.
My daughter makes great jewellery and my son wants to pursue engineering. They've both been indoctrinated by the school of Linley. People want to get back to painting, building, exploring what their creative sides can do - it's something all human beings crave.
When I would visit my Granny as a little boy, we would play this game of closing our eyes and describing everything around us. The color of a tie. The shade of a cloth. It was really quite a wonderful way to learn how to look, to notice things and to appreciate what is around you.
I have bought and sold and bought and sold things that have given me great pleasure over the years, and I find I go through phases of what I'm passionate about. And then the next thing comes along, and so the only way of being able to collect the next one is to sell a few of the other ones.
For the novice furniture collector, buying antiques can seem a rather daunting prospect. Nobody wants to feel that they may not make a wise choice and that ultimately they could be throwing their money away. The main thing is that you should always buy something first and foremost because you like it.
I'll never forget the moment in 1985 when I was riding my motorbike down the King's Road and I first saw the words David Linley on the sign on my first shop. I nearly came off my bike. It was so incredibly public; I suddenly realised there was to be no stepping away from my work because my name was all over it.
Design is important. I spend much of my working life as a designer. But how can you design for materials if you don't know what they can do? The feel of them, the possibilities, the capabilities? These are things you learn only by working with materials all the time. Frankly, a university degree is not much help in that.
I started off by doing everything myself, driving the truck, going to the woodshop, buying the wood, designing the furniture, cutting it out, making it myself, finishing it, polishing it, and delivering it, and writing the invoice and writing the letters, doing the books, doing the telephone bill and everything else like that.
My father's rooms, as a child, were a very exciting place to be. Not only because of the beautiful models who were coming to be photographed for Vogue or The Sunday Times but also because of the very avant-garde furniture that he had made. He made designs for the investiture of the Prince of Wales in 1969 at Caernarfon Castle.
There's a real hunger to understand where objects come from, how artists show their understanding of materials. And there's something fascinating about watching people work, whether it's someone engraving a gun or sewing beautiful clothes together. I know that myself; I'll make a piece of furniture and feel the wood's grain talking to me.