The British furniture manufacturer, showing at Clerkenwell Design Week for the first time, is bringing a domestic aesthetic to the contract market
When Case Furniture set out their lot at the Farmiloes Building this week, it’ll be the first time the London-based brand has presented at Clerkenwell Design Week. Established in 2006 by Sheridan Coakley of SCP and product designer Paul Newman, they have, since inception, worked with larger retailers to bring quality, affordable design to the mass market. Recently Case has been expanding into contract work, including a high-profile refit of nearly 750 apartments in East Village – formerly the 2012 Olympic village – in Stratford, East London, now a residential development. Their collection includes designs by Matthew Hilton, Robin Day, Bethan Gray and Shin Azumi. “It’ll be interesting to see how our brand’s received,” says director Andy Mackay, excitedly. “Clerkenwell is a more contract-focussed show and that side of our business is certainly growing. Our product is predominantly domestic, so we tend to design domestic products with the contract market in mind. That’s our USP I think. Typical contract products seem to be very ‘contract looking’, whatever that means. To make a domestic product perform very well in contract is what we try and do.
“Take the Profile chair [by Matthew Hilton], one of the launch products from 2006 and one of our best sellers. It’s a domestic product, but by adding a strengthening bracket to the back joint it becomes level three contract tested, which is everything below prisons. We’re always thinking about the durability of the products above and beyond a domestic environment. It’s a technical challenge, but good design is good design.”
Another example of this versatility is Hilton’s spacious Theo sofa. Sitting in Case’s Clapham showroom with Andy and development designer Duncan Bull, the temptation to leap onto a caramel coloured Theo and sink into a satisfied snooze nestled in the soft leather is overwhelming. “It’s a very generous seating proportion for the size of the sofa, so you could have a three-seat waiting room sofa without people rubbing shoulders,” says Andy, as I visualise a row of serenely comfortable pensioners waiting for their turn in the dentist’s chair.
The showroom, which doubles as an HQ, is modest but allows the Case team to spend their working hours with product samples, so they can “Really interact with the products, see what needs to be changed and tinker with them” according to Duncan. “Also, it’s important to gauge people’s reactions,” says Andy. “It enables us to present our brand as we see it.”
Case Furniture: tried and tested.
Photography Robin Sinha
