Gordon Russell started making furniture in Broadway in 1919, in a workshop at the edge of the Cotswolds. His driving conviction was that quality in furniture did not need to be confined to wealthy households: that craft and industrial production were reconcilable if you approached both honestly. The museum in his former machine-shop tends to recognise work in that spirit.
The Pen Box received the Ray Leigh Design Award at the 2023 ceremony. Ray Leigh, who joined Gordon Russell's company as a partner in 1957, helped found the Crafts Council, and converted the old machine-shop into the museum in 2008, died in March 2025 at 96. He was a link between the Festival of Britain generation and the contemporary British design world, and the award in his name is given for small objects designed for batch production: precisely the territory Russell had been working across a century earlier.
The Piece
The Pen Box takes its form from the lines of a sailing boat and owes something in spirit to the wooden pencil cases that were common in schools before plastic made them irrelevant. It is made in walnut, with a brass pivot set into the narrow end that allows the lid to open cleanly with one hand, without any hardware visible on the top surface. The form is the result of working out what the object needs to do and removing everything else: keep a pen or two, open easily, sit well on a desk.
The walnut takes an oil finish better than most timbers and has a density that gives the object satisfying weight without bulk; the grain varies enough between boards that no two boxes are quite identical. The boxes are available for personalisation with engraved initials, and through the Gordon Russell Design Museum shop.
