Embrace

Embrace was a commission from John Makepeace OBE, made with Josey Garbutt and Krav Metcalfe as Foris Studio. Foris was the practice the three of us ran after meeting at Rycotewood Furniture Centre, before I started Lapwing. Makepeace commissioned us after seeing our work at the 2023 Young Furniture Makers Awards in London.

Makepeace is one of Britain's most influential furniture designers. He founded Parnham College for furniture makers in 1977 and has spent decades pushing the boundaries of what furniture can be, exploring organic form and the structural possibilities of wood.

Embrace is a collection of seats and a circular table in English oak, designed for close, facing conversation. The table has an oak burr bowl set into the centre.

Each piece is built from layers of oak laid in alternating directions and then sculpted by hand across the surface. Working across alternating grain directions gives the finished form its structural stability: the piece can be taken to curved, undulating shapes that solid oak would resist. The posture of the seats comes from the sculpted form itself rather than from a conventional back structure. The surface is wire brushed to a pale, open finish.

The collection was shown at Shades of Light, a group exhibition at Galerie 56 in New York in autumn 2024, the first standalone gallery show Sarah Myerscough has staged in the United States.

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