Interiors: Gray area – how one designer puts her money where her mouth is

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/oct/04/homes-bethan-gray-furniture-design

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The Cardiff-born, London-based furniture and product designer Bethan Gray isn’t scared of the word commercial, anathema to many of her contemporaries. “If something sells well and people like it, why is that a bad thing?” she says in her typically pragmatic manner. Which is just as well because, since Gray launched her own studio in 2008, her elegant, feminine and easy-to-understand contemporary furniture has been quietly making its mark on the design scene, and finding its way into people’s homes. In 2013, she was named British Designer of the Year.

While her silhouettes are at first glance simple and pared back, what sets Gray apart is her passion for natural materials, and for craftsmanship fused with modern technology. “I want things that can last a long time. I love solid wood, leather and marble, and the unique patterning that comes with them,” she says. “Every piece of stone I use is going to be different, and it’s so old that it has a little bit of the universe’s history in it. Likewise with wood: its grain tells a story, it records events. That uniqueness creates warmth, and I like warm, cosy environments. I always try to create pieces that will add warmth to people’s homes and will last.” The grain of leather, she feels, even as it marks and changes through the years, tells of a life lived. “It reminds me of a wooden table at my mum’s house when we were little. I can still remember making some of those marks. It’s marked, not ruined. I like that.”

We meet at Gray’s west London home, not far from her studio, where she’s officially on maternity leave. She and her husband, Massimo, who co-founded the company with her and now runs the business side, have a six-month-old son, Cian Luca. “We’re lucky that we work together,” Gray says. “It means there’s a built-in flexibility, which has meant I’ve been working a little since the baby was a week old.” Their home, in tasteful shades of white, grey and midnight blue, is the perfect light-filled, unfussy canvas for Gray’s neat furniture, which is everywhere. “If I can’t live with it, how could I expect anyone else to?” she asks. “Also I do like what I design and it functions well in a busy family home.”

The couple have just finished preparations for Gray’s six-month pop-up shop in Harrods, which opened during last month’s London Design festival. With about 15 pieces available, of which six are exclusives, including her new Ella sofa for WorkHouse, Gray is excited.

New pieces include a leather-and-brass version of her Brogue table, and a console and dining table from the Carve range. There’s a dining chair in leather, and mirrors with brass studs in coral, teal and white. She also has several pieces exhibited in the store’s Yoo Home collection.

It’s no wonder that Gray has ended up a lover of honest materials and fine craft: her Scottish forester grandfather used to carve trinkets for her, while her father, a geologist, is a keen furniture-maker who goes by the nickname of Woody. It’s as if her path was always set. “My family has always been arty in some way, so I never knew any different,” she says. “My brother and I would be at the kitchen table, making things, getting dye everywhere, and my school really encouraged me, too. I made a sofa bed for my CDT [craft, design and technology] GCSE.”

From school, she went to DeMontfort University in Leicester to study three-dimensional design. “It was the course I really wanted to do: design for mass-production, as opposed to a designer-maker course. I always wanted to make functional, well-made things, using beautiful materials; products that people would use and live with. I never wanted to make something that you’d have to explain for 10 minutes.”

After the course, British industrial designer Tom Dixon, the then design director at Habitat, awarded Gray’s the innovation prize at the New Designers show in 1998, and then gave her a job. Six years later, she’d become Habitat’s design director herself, and was responsible for several of the company’s hugely successful furniture lines.

But in 2008 it was time to go it alone. “I learned so much at Habitat: about development, production; I travelled lots, I worked with the great designer Robin Day on reissues of his iconic pieces.” Even so, she felt creatively restricted. “I needed to design things that were more elegant in a contemporary, feminine way.”

Six years down the line, that’s precisely what Gray is doing. With hugely successful collaborations with retailers John Lewis in the UK and Crate & Barrel in the US, plus another big project in the works – “I can’t tell you about it for a few more months, but it involved lots of trips to India” – her future is most definitely set.

House rules

Favourite piece of furniture I picked up a vintage Japanese rocking chair from Golborne Road Market in west London, which I’ve paired with a beautiful sheepskin.

Biggest extravagance We are very lucky to own two Picasso plates. They’re earthenware with a graphic profile of goats: one black, one white.

Last house guest My father. We’ve just had a baby and have our hands full, so he came to help with the garden.

Dream home Somewhere with a beautiful view of the sea and lots of light. I imagine a lot of large sections of glass with wood and stone with brass.