For more than two decades, Tom Faulkner has been based at the Carriage Works in Swindon, creating furniture that combines bold geometry with elegant craftsmanship. Renowned internationally for his sculptural tables, chairs and consoles, Tom’s work blends traditional techniques with a modern sensibility, attracting clients from private collectors to leading interior designers and luxury brands.

From his workshop at the Carriage Works, Tom and his team of skilled makers bring ideas to life using metal, glass, stone and wood. Each piece is made by hand, reflecting the heritage of craft that has defined the site since its days as a powerhouse of railway engineering. The historic industrial setting provides both inspiration and practicality — offering space, flexibility and a creative community around him.

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Tom Faulkner, the founder and creator of the business,has been “making things”, as he says, for more than 30 years. After spendinghis twenties in a various fields of employment his creativity really started totake a hold while he was working in the music business, for Chrysalis Recordsin London.

It all started with a broken coffee table, which herepaired and then decorated with his own artworks using stencils (which hedesigned and cut) and lots of paint and colour. Impressed by his own ingenuityhe started to find old tables to decorate and started to sell them to friendsand family.

When redundancy from the world of music rather abruptly arrivedhe decided to take a deep breath to turn his hobby in to a business: TomFaulkner Hand Painted Furniture. “It was a leap in the dark” says Tom. “Iknew nothing of business, or interiors…..or furniture.”

Then sometime in the early 90s Tom discovered metal. He wasexhibiting his tables at a show at London’s Earls Court, and, needing somethingto sit on he found a small workshop in Wiltshire who could make a chair for him- out of metal, to his own design.  

The chair was real statement piece, and it set Tomthinking – and he was seduced by the material, by metal’s stylistic possibilities,the fact that it could be bent and twisted into almost any shape you liked - andhe was intrigued by its strength, versatility, and simplicity.

Tom started to design new tables and chairs using thestrengths and properties of this magic material, and then set up his workshop rightnext door to the forge. The business became Tom Faulkner Designs. The reactionwas immediate, orders started to grow, and interior designers started to takenotice. Then in 1996 the owner of the forge saw his chance to retire andoffered Tom the lease on his workshop and two employees – Nigel andGordon.  Tom took another deep breath andagreed to buy the lease. And the machines.  And of course Nigel and Gordon came too. Thebusiness became (the less snappy) Tom Faulkner Metal and Glass Furniture.

As the business has grown, so has the workshop but it isstill in Wiltshire – now in Swindon, in the original railway workshops built bythe great British engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel in the 1850s. Gordon retiredin 2017 (after 21 years), and Nigel (Ballamy) is still there - currently headof product development and still at the heart of the workshop.

In 1999, Tom opened his first showroom, in Clerkenwell,London. In 2004, Miranda Kirwan joined the business. She started on a part timebasis and with a background in sales and marketing she gradually became anintegral part of the business. In 2008 Tom and Miranda decided to move theshowroom to larger premises in Chelsea, to be closer to their core clientele. Mirandahas grown in to the role of CEO, and although both of their roles can beblurred around the edges, Tom describes them both as the “co-authors” of TomFaulkner, as it is today.

In 2016 they started to sell through partner showrooms inNew York and Los Angeles – opening a rich seam of interest in Tom’s work. Theyadded further showrooms in Dallas, San Francisco, Denver, Atlanta, Toronto, andTokyo.

In 2022 Tom opened a showroom in the prestigious PimlicoRoad in Belgravia, London and in 2023 in potentially one of the mostsignificant events in the TF story he opened his very own dedicated showroom inthe New York Design Centre at 200 Lexington Avenue, New York.

There are plans to grow the business further in the USand other showrooms could be on the horizon, but for now it is London – NewYork – Swindon.

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Metalremains Tom’s first love, and he has continued to explore its possibilities ofform and shape, using both bronze and steel combined with other naturalmaterials such as marble, timber, glass, leather, and even plaster. He travelsconstantly in search of new inspiration, drawing it from sources as diverse asJapan and Bauhaus-era Germany.

Tomnever really stops thinking about design, but away from the workshop andshowroom, his interests include playing the guitar and spending qualitydowntime in Oxfordshire.

OUR DESIGN APPROACH

“Ibelieve in the richness of visual simplicity: there might often be complexgeometry at work but most of what I create looks strong, clean and unfussy. Thequality of any piece is in the line, proportion, and detail.” – Tom

Tomis a master of the simple but striking form. His approach to design can besummed up by two of his favourite phrases attributed to the great architect LudwigMies Van der Rohe: ‘Less is more’, and ‘God is in the details’.

Thehallmarks of Tom Faulkner furniture include strong silhouettes, recurringmotifs and finishes that bring out the beauty of the underlying materials. Thesefeatures, in combination with Tom’s fascination with classical geometry, give thepieces a timeless, elemental quality.

Attentionto detail is paramount at every stage of the design and manufacturing processes.Everything is handmade in Tom’s workshop and the judgement, skill, and care ofthe craftspeople there is as important as anything else in the business.

Havinghis own workshop allows Tom to be actively engaged throughout. It also giveshim the luxury of being able to produce as many prototypes as necessary to geta piece absolutely right.

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