Tom Faulkner

The firm is celebrated for its faultless standards of quality and exceptional service. Tom Faulkner, the founder and driving force of the business, has been making things”, as he says, for more than 20 years. After spending his twenties in various different jobs his creativity started to really take hold while he was working for Chrysalis Records in London. It all started with a coffee table, which he decorated using stencils and spray-paint. Impressed by his own ingenuity he started to sell tables to friends and family, and when redundancy from the world of music suddenly arrived he took a deep breath and started a business. It was a leap in the dark” says Tom. Then I knew nothing of business, or interiors, or furniture for that matter!” In 1995 Tom discovered metal. He needed a chair to sit on for an exhibition of his tables, but he didn’t want just any old chair. He found a small forge in Wiltshire who could make him some, to his own design. Metal was an amazing discovery for Tom, he was seduced by its stylistic possibilities — the fact that it could be bent and twisted into almost any shape you liked. He was thrilled by its strength, versatility, and simplicity.” Tom started to design new tables and dining chairs. Reaction was immediate, and the business started to grow organically, as it has done so ever since. In 1996 Tom took another deep breath and bought the Wiltshire forge from the retiring proprietor, and a bigger business was born. As the business has grown, so has the workshop but it is still in Wiltshire - in Swindon, in the original railway workshops built by the great British engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel in the 1850s. Nigel Ballamy and Gordon Ball, his first two employees, still work for him today.