The Marchmont Workshop

Edition Three Feature
Words by: Sam Cooper and Richard Platt 
Location: Scottish Borders, UK 
Photo Credits: We Are Makers
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vThe Marchmont Workshop, established at the start of 2020, is the first new facility making traditional rush-seated chairs to open in the UK in 54 years. Set up by chair makers Sam Cooper and Richard Platt, we specialise in historic ladder-back chairs in the style of Philip Clissett and Ernest Gimson – a style with a legacy that began in 1890. 

Chair making was once a vibrant, almost ubiquitous village craft, with endless regional variations, but the number of practitioners steadily dwindled. Indeed, in 2018, we started an apprenticeship with Lawrence Neal, then the last rush-seated chair maker in the UK. We are now reviving the practice as the sixth generation of chair makers since Clissett’s day. 

Like many craftspeople before us, we both possessed the desire to work with our physical skills, having decided that desk jobs weren’t for us. So, when the opportunity arose to become the custodians of an endangered craft, we grabbed it with both hands. It wasn’t the traditional path to furniture making for either of us, with Rich studying music at university, while I previously worked as a scuba instructor. 

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