Contemporary Furniture Design: Including Great Commissions
Wed 1st Feb at 2pm
Anthony Russell
Anthony Russell was educated at Bryanston and read Art History at Oxford Brooks. He worked as a fine art auctioneer and antique dealer in London before moving back to the West Country to follow the family tradition as a professional artist. Anthony combined painting with tour lecturing around the world. He spent six years as a consultant advising prestigious buildings on their furniture needs, including museums, palaces, schools & cathedrals. He has lectured to the Church of England, architects and national and local societies and charities. He has published various articles on architecture and spirituality, co wrote the guide Australian Adventure Sports, and is currently researching a book on peace.
With major furniture commissions in 54 of the 68 Oxbridge colleges, countless museums, palaces, boardrooms and churches, it is highly probably that you have sat on a Luke Hughes chair or around a boardroom table without knowing it. Despite a scholarship to Peterhouse and subsequent History of Art and Chinese degree, Luke Hughes chose to become a furniture maker. But an accident climbing in the Himalayas necessitated a more intellectual approach that considered the true requirements of modern furniture design. He has since become a dominant figure in the British furniture world with his revolutionary mantra of “flexibility” and “practicality”, not to mention the phrase “fine architecture is grossly undermined by bad furniture”. This lecture shows what modern furniture requirements say about our society today and illustrates many of the fabulous commissions undertaken by Luke Hughes, many beyond the scrutiny of the public.
