Champions of Craft: Sebastian Cox

How do you select the wood for each product? Is there are feeling you get (physical or sensorial) when choosing the materials?

Once I’m in the timber yard looking through boules of timber, the selection process is heavily led by my own emotional connection to my material. In promoting the breadth of British hardwoods that we have available to us I have a much greater level of affection for timber which is particularly characterful and expresses the variety which makes British hardwoods so spectacular.

Timber like that, with colourful detailing, flecking, pipping, defined grains, knots and shakes, elicits a great feeling of excitement within me because those features are true manifestations of the beauty of my material and it’s those features that drive my creativity and the designing process.

How do your own feelings come through in your work?

My passion for the material is clearly shown through the way we use them in the workshop and in the design process; we use them in a sensitive and considered way. Everything we produce is embodied by the love of the maker. We enjoy what we do and we’re proud of the work we produce. I believe that a little bit of that feeling is embodied in everything that leaves the workshop. So much so, we tried to capture this in the piece we created for Clerkenwell Design Week, with artist Laura Ellen Bacon, called the Invisible Store of Happiness.