History
Since moving to Covent Garden, nearly 45 years ago, Luke Hughes and his team have concentrated on designing and making furniture for public buildings, notably buildings of Academe, Worship, Culture and Public Life – principally in the UK and USA.
Academic clients include more than 60 Oxbridge colleges, 29 college and school dining halls, 28 major institutional libraries, and 11 other universities including Yale, Harvard and Duke.
Worship clients include the communities of 26 cathedrals, more than 160 parish churches and 9 synagogues. The company designed the clergy furniture used in Westminster Abbey for the Royal Wedding in 2011, the funeral of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth in 2022 and the coronation of King Charles III in 2023.
Major civic commissions include the UK Supreme Court and the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington DC. Museums include National Gallery, British Museum, Fitzwilliam Museum, Victoria & Albert Museum, and Leighton House.
We have a deep understanding about architecture and how to make it work. A particular expertise lies in equipping dining halls, common rooms, libraries, theatres and auditoria, galleries, meeting and conference rooms, not to mention prayer halls, cathedral naves and sacred areas – without diminishing the architecture.
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Philosophy
Most buildings have neither function nor purpose – until there is a chair to sit on and a table to sit at – yet inappropriate pieces grossly undermine great architecture. Furniture should embellish and articulate an architectural setting, not embarrass it.
We focus on working with clients who occupy distinguished buildings, for whom great architecture is used to project something of the values of their particular institution. Our job is to ensure their buildings stay relevant and are practical, versatile, easy to manage and elegant to inhabit.
Our aim is for the furniture to appear as a seamless extension of the architecture, looking logical and appropriate … as though it has always been there.
But furniture also has to work, and to last at least 50 years or more. Knowledge and experience gained over decades has informed a unique relationship between creative craftwork and high precision, industrial production. Although designs are always respectful of context – striving to be accomplished, discreet and restrained – they are also rugged, robust, and built to last.
We have evolved countless engineered techniques for ensuring adaptability of the furniture (tables that fold, chairs that stack, etc.) – these allow for multiple uses and enhanced commercial prospects.
Copyright: The estate of Tony Husband
Our Clients
Our clients understand the difference between price and value. They are wise enough to invest for the long term (which ultimately carries a much lower cost and a higher return). Our particular skill is to see beyond the immediate needs of a project in order to deliver lasting value for owners.
It is not just working with the owner or occupier. This also means collaborating with their architects and the other professionals who are integral to the process.
Our hope is to create a partnership for life. In fact, some of our clients in Oxford and Cambridge have already been coming back and back to us for more than 40 years.
We like that.
Luke Hughes with early furniture.
Oxford University
Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington
Salisbury Cathedral
Videos for major topics
Luke Hughes with early furniture.
Philosophy & approach
Our Clients
The Value Proposition
Liturgical furniture
Sustainability
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Books
Luke Hughes with early furniture.
Furniture in Architecture by Aidan Walker. Published by Thames & Hudson
Luke Hughes & Company’s enduring and meticulously engineered furniture, an eloquent response both to the architecture it inhabits and to the true Arts and Crafts spirit, has been placed at the forefront of the ‘craft-led renaissance in British manufacturing.’ Flexible in use, commercially viable and environmentally sustainable, the work furnishes many of the world’s most distinguished buildings
