Thinking About Sustainability

Slow Furniture was started to earn a living more thoughtfully and through that to do our best to have less impact on the environment.

Having worked in an industry where there was so much waste there was a need to reflect these values more closely, and not continue to contribute to the wastefulness that was seen. 

It’s important for us to do our best to meet these values, and we realise we could always improve and will always look to do so. As always, it’s difficult to be perfect, but it's easy just to try to be a little better each time.

Of course, when you buy from Slow Furniture you are buying local and that’s always a good thing.

From a customer point of view, we see that it's increasingly important that you know the materials used to make your furniture have been responsibly and thoughtfully sourced and that it has been made to last.

From our perspective we can work on three levels to reduce our impact: Materials & Consumables, Tools & Techniques and Design.

We’ll deal with each separately, however they do all interplay to some extent.

Materials & Consumables:

Here at Slow Furniture we like to use solid wood, because it’s natural and renewable (and we love working with it!). However, there is a great difference between how the timber is produced and therefore its impact on the environment. 

For this reason, we should all be aware of and buy timber that is approved by The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) or the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC). This is a minimum criteria for us. Where we can we like to go one step further and not only use FSC-timber but FSC-timber grown locally in the UK.

We have a couple local suppliers that we like to use. One of them in particular is UK Hardwoods, some 10 miles from our workshop here in Braunton, Devon. They supply lots of lovely Oak, Ash and Chestnut and some softwoods, and we recommend them for any timber needs you may have.

The beauty of using solid wood in our furniture is that there is very minimal waste. Larger offcuts are used to make smaller items for sale such as boxes, or cutting boards or used as an energy source. Smaller offcuts can be used as kindling and we find that the shavings created from our hand planes make perfect fire starters!! We even use our shavings as packing materials to send off completed pieces to our lovely customers.

There is something quite satisfying about tidying up from a long day of work, and knowing that waste by-product will be re-purposed in some way.

Consumables are often overlooked when considering the amount of waste a furniture maker is producing. Surely, to make the furniture we need all these power saws, their replacement blades and the sandpaper to produce the finish, right?

Well, not exactly. One of the joys of working wood with hand tools, is it's not always necessary to have these items to successfully make beautiful pieces of furniture. Here at Slow Furniture we use minimal sandpaper, and rely on the finish straight from a very sharp handplane. Perhaps we give it a little tickle with some 240 grit sandpaper prior to applying the finish - but used in this way a 2inch square piece of sandpaper can last us ages!

And because we use re-sharpenable hand planes more often than not, we rely less on expensive throw away blades and bits. 

Finally, we’ve all thrown away loads of those hand saws from the DIY store in our lifetime. I don't know how many of those must end up in the skip a year, but it's a lot! This is why we value the skill of being able to manually sharpen a traditional handsaw. They cut as well as the disposable ones, but can last a lifetime of re-sharpening.

Tools and techniques

The technique employed in making is the important one for Slow Furniture. When you buy from us we want your beautifully handmade table to last generations and for it to become an heirloom object that your children can one day inherit!

This is where proper craftsmanship and joinery methods come into play. There really is no beating traditional woodworking joints, for strength and longevity, such as the humble mortice and tenon, and we do not compromise on this factor. 

All our furniture from its very conception on a piece of paper, is considered in terms of its strength and durability. This could mean the sizing of the individual parts or choice of which joint is best to use in a particular situation.

Aside from the joy in cutting these joints by hand, they really do stand the test of time and will ensure that when you invest in a handcrafted piece from Slow Furniture, you can have the confidence that you will be able to enjoy it for many many years to come.

The fact that we do utilise these joints and enjoy cutting them by hand does mean that we can keep a minimal tool kit and don’t need to splash out on a whole array of machines and power tools to produce our work. And of course there is the associated use of energy when using them. Most of the time for us it's just a handplane and good old fashioned elbow grease! (Note: we’re not complete hand tool purests, and do appreciate the speed in which things can be done with power tools, and do use them for certain time-consuming tasks).

Design

I don't want to go on too much about design as it's such a subjective thing - not everyone has the same taste, and shouldn’t.

The pictures on our website show the style of furniture we like to make for our customers, and of course we are happy to consider our customers' ideas, but ultimately, we like to emphasize modern with a timeless quality. We think it is so important when you are purchasing a lifetime piece to consider this:  will you still like it in 20-30 years or more. How will it age? Will it go out of fashion? Keeping the design simple, quiet and un-fussy usually, in our opinion, ensures lasting beauty.

“Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.”

• William Morris