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Luke Hughes is an English furniture designer specialising in furniture for public buildings including
Hughes is founder, and CEO of Luke Hughes and Company Limited, whose early output consisted of furniture for the residential market. The same period also saw Hughes’ short-lived engagement with designing for the retail market. This came in the form of the ill-fated Ovolo line of bedroom furniture, originally manufactured by a
Luke Hughes is an English furniture designer specialising in furniture for public buildings including Westminster Abbey
Westminster Abbey, formally titled the Collegiate Church of Saint Peter at Westminster, is an historic, mainly Gothic church in the City of Westminster, London, England, just to the west of the Palace of Westminster. It is one of the Unite ...
.
Career
Hughes was temporarily working as a carpenter on London building sites in 1979 when chosen to lead a design project for kitchen shelving, which led further to the refurbishment of the client's home library. This was the first library project that led to a series of bookcase designs and installations forInns of Court
The Inns of Court in London are the professional associations for barristers in England and Wales. There are four Inns of Court – Gray's Inn, Lincoln's Inn, Inner Temple and Middle Temple.
All barristers must belong to one of them. They have ...
lawyers. He set up his first company, Bloomsbury Joinery, in 1980 in Lamb's Conduit Street, Bloomsbury.
Hughes is founder, and CEO of Luke Hughes and Company Limited, whose early output consisted of furniture for the residential market. The same period also saw Hughes’ short-lived engagement with designing for the retail market. This came in the form of the ill-fated Ovolo line of bedroom furniture, originally manufactured by a Birmingham
Birmingham ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands (county), West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1. ...
reproduction furniture company, Juckes, and sold through Heal's
Heal's ("Heal and Son Ltd") is a British furniture retail company comprising seven stores, selling a range of furniture, lighting and home accessories. For over two centuries, it has been known for promoting modern design and employing t ...
, Liberty's and John Lewis
John Robert Lewis (February 21, 1940 – July 17, 2020) was an American politician and civil rights activist who served in the United States House of Representatives for from 1987 until his death in 2020. He participated in the 1960 Nashville ...
. The line's failure to gain a foothold with the consumer forced a change to the targeting of institutional clients. To that end, Hughes brought architect and former managing director of Cotswold Furniture Manufacturers, Gordon Russell, on board.
Selected projects
* Chapel of the Resurrection, Valparaiso University, Indiana was furnished with an updated and re-engineered version of ‘the Coventry Chair’ designed originally by Richard "Dick" Russell in 1960. * St Giles Edinburgh – a new Holy Table in hand-tooled Carrara marble. *Sheffield Cathedral
The Cathedral Church of St Peter and St Paul, Sheffield, more commonly known as Sheffield Cathedral, is the cathedral church for the Church of England diocese of Sheffield, England. Originally a parish church, it was elevated to cathedral st ...
, stacking benches.
* The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom The library houses 35,000 books in a space intended for less than 25,000.
* The Sainsbury Laboratory, University of Cambridge Botanic Institute; LHCL devised a range of furniture for this, with stainless steel frames, leather upholstery and timber veneered workstations.
*In 1997, the firm made a desk for the British Embassy Moscow.
References
Further reading
*‘Furniture in Architecture: The Work of Luke Hughes’ by Aidan Walker, Thames & Hudson 2020External links
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Hughes, Luke Living people 1957 births English furniture designers People educated at Salisbury Cathedral School People educated at St Paul's School, London Alumni of Peterhouse, Cambridge