DAVID COLWELL
David Colwell is one of the UK’s most respected designers. Trained in Furniture Design at the Royal College of Art, his designs are timeless and his passion is to create furniture that addresses real issues for the future.
David’s furniture has won many awards and appears in permanent and private collections across Europe and America, including London’s V&A Museum and the Vitra Design Museum in Germany.
Before starting Trannon Furniture, David had a successful design practice in Kings Road, London, and was retained by ICI Plastics for product design and J Walter Thompson for interior design and working environments.
AWARDS:
Design Mark Guild. ROXi Chair, 2025
Wood Award Innovation Prize. Achair, 2010
Creative Wales Award, 2009/2010
Silver Medal & 3D Design Awards, Royal College of Art
Public seating Award, Sit 94: National Museum of Wales (Museum of the Year 1995)
FX Green Seating Award: C3 Stacking Chair
4 Guild Mark, Worshipful Company of Furniture Makers: C1 Upholstered Recliner and Footstool, C3 Stacking Chair, Ash Round Tables, T2 Extending Table
INDEXES:
Crafts Council Index, Southern Arts, AXIS, Commissions East, SW Arts, Public arts
PUBLICATIONS:
Modern British Furniture. Lesley Jackson, V&A publication (2013)
COLLECTIONS:
Modelo Museum of Science and Industry, Toluca, Mexico: C3 Stacking Chair
Rhode Island School of Design Collection, USA: Contour Chair
Philadelphia Museum of Art, USA: Contour Chair
Vitra Design Museum, Germany: Contour Chair
Victoria And Albert Museum, London: C1 Recliner & Footstool, C3 Stacking Chair, Contour Chair
Victor Papanek’s Private Collection, USA: C2 Director’s Chair
Design Museum, London: Contour Chair
Crafts Council Collection, London: C3 Stacking Chairs
John Makepeace OBE private collection, UK: C1 Rattan Recliner & Footstool
Temple Newsam House, Leeds City Musuem: C1 Rattan Recliner & Footstool
Design Centre Index, London: C1 Reclining Chair, C2 Director’s Chair, C3 Stacking Chair
The Science Museum, London: C3 Stacking Chair
EXHIBITIONS AND EVENTS:
2026.Design Matters Exhibition MWA, Wales, UK
2019. Artist in residence, School for Furniture Craftsmanship. Maine, USA
2018. British Library Interview.
2016 / 17. Sri Lanka, Investigating uses of Cinnamon wood as a by-product of cinnamon production.
2015. Designed and arranged manufacture of Worcester College, Oxford, Lecture Theatre Seating
2014. Tales from the Wildwood, TV nature series. Rob Penn
2014. As William Morris Said, Ruthin Craft Centre.
2013. Making Chairs, one man show, Craft Study Centre and Ruthin Crafts Centre.
2012. Visiting professor. California Collage of Art, San Francisco.
2009. Soho Green Table and Seating
2007. Ludlow Food Centre Interior
2007. Visiting teacher of chair making, School for Furniture Craftsmanship. Maine, USA.
2004. Opening of Scottish Parliament
2004. ’Collect’ Crafts Council Exhibition at the V&A Museum
2003. Design and making of Scottish Parliament Reception Desk
2003. ’Classics’ Brussels
1995-2003. ’100% Design’
2003. ’To Have and To Hold’ Ferrers Gallery
1998/1999/ 2003. ’Art In Action’ Oxford
2003. ’International Festival of Gardens’ Westonbirt Arboretum
1997/1998/ 2002/2003. ‘House & Garden’
2003. ’Take A Seat’ Bluecoat Display Center
2003. ’Table Wares’ Beatrice Royal Gallery
2002. ’Sustainable Designs’ Johannesburg World Summit
1997/1998/2002. ‘Artisan’ Edinburgh Festival
2002. ’Take a Seat’ Grace Barrand Design Studio
2002. ’In Praise of Trees’ with English Nature, Salisbury Festival
2002.’Wood x 10′ Scottish Gallery
2000/2001/2002/2003. ’Homelodge Show House’, Ideal Home Exhibition
1999/2000/2002. ’Ergonomic Chairs’ Science Museum Touring Exhibition, London 1999, Manchester 2000, Portugal 2002
2002. ’Solo’ Artifex Gallery
2001/2002. ’Rufford Gallery’ Nottingham
2001/2002. ‘Brewery Arts’ Cirencester
1990/2001. ’Chelsea Crafts Fair’
2001. ’Designer’s Block’ London
1999/2000/2001. ’MODE’
2001. ’Green Design’ Bledffa
1994-1996/2001. ’Spectrum’
2000. ’Wind & Wave’ Beatrice Royal Gallery
2000. ’Guild Mark Exhibition’ Pallant House Gallery
1994-96/ 1998-99/ 2000.’Country Living Spring Fair’
1998. ’Guild Mark Exhibition’
1995-96/ 1999. ’A Celebration of Craftsmanship’ Betty Norbury
1995. ’International Contemporary Furniture Fair’ New York
1992-96. ’Decorative Arts Today’ Bonhams
1995. ’Greenwood’ Contemporary Applied Arts
1994. ’Conservation by Design’ RISD Museum of Modern Art, USA
1992. ’Christmas Show’ Oriel Moystn
1992. ’Living Room’ Oxford Gallery
1992. ’Having Made It’ Oriel
1992. ‘IDI’
1992. ‘Exempla 92’ Munich
1992. ‘Chair Gallery’ Design Museum
1991-92. ’Beyond The Dovetail’ Crafts Council
1990. ’In the First Place’ Aberystwyth Arts Centre
1988. ’Furniture Focus’ Northern Centre for Contemporary Art
1983. ’Recent Work’ Leeds Craft Centre and Design Gallery
1983. ’Recent Work’ (Solo) Prescote Gallery
1982. ’The Maker’s Eye’ Crafts Council
1981. ’The Wood Exhibition’ Northern Arts
1981. ’Prescote in London’ Warwick Arts Trust
1980. ’Furniture Projects’ Crafts Council
1980. ’Crafts Council 80′
1978-84. ‘Furniture Makers’ Prescote Gallery
1971. ‘Chairs’ Victoria and Albert Museum
1970. ‘Whitechapel Chairs 70’
1967. ‘Perspex 67’ Royal College of Art
COMFORT
Comfort lies at the centre of all my designs. Good posture and comfort are inseparable.
Generous lumbar support, combined with minimal pressure on the lower back, can be remarkably effective, allowing a chair to accommodate a wide range of bodies and ways of sitting. Flexibility is equally important. All my chairs incorporate flexible structures, not only because they yield to the body, but because they encourage movement. That movement reduces pressure points and creates greater comfort over time.
Flexible chairs make for flexible people.
The ability to draw the feet back beneath the seat makes it easier to enter and leave a chair, while also supporting a comfortable forward sitting posture. To achieve this, my chairs avoid the need for a front rail. Their lightweight construction also makes them easier to move towards or away from a table, while using less material and occupying less space.
In public seating, flexibility is not always appropriate, but the arrangement of people in relation to one another remains fascinating. Comfort is not only physical. It is social.
Traditional linear seating often provides neither privacy nor inclusivity. Creating arrangements where interaction is possible, but never imposed, is another important dimension of comfort.
STRUCTURE
A chair must support a dynamic load many times its own weight. These chairs are designed as fully triangulated structures, where strength comes not from mass, but from geometry.
Triangulation creates efficiency and stability, allowing the joints to work as pivots rather than relying on heavy construction. To balance this inherent rigidity, one or more sides of the triangles are curved, introducing flexibility into the structure.
This controlled flexibility does more than improve comfort. It allows the chair to become stronger, lighter and more responsive in use.
The result is a structure that works with movement rather than resisting it.
MATERIAL
When choosing structural materials, wood stands apart. Merely growing it brings environmental benefit.
Among hardwoods, ash is exceptional. Tough, resilient and remarkably strong when fast grown, it is also self-seeding and naturally suited to sustainable forestry. Unlike many timbers, ash contains no distinct sapwood, reducing waste in conversion and making more of the tree usable.
Together with Douglas fir, ash is among the most effective trees for absorbing atmospheric carbon and grows particularly well in the UK. It is plentiful, comparatively affordable and ideally suited to steam bending.
The finest fast-grown ash often comes from younger trees, frequently woodland thinnings. This benefits foresters too, providing a valuable return long before the main timber crop matures.
Ash is not simply a material of convenience. Its qualities — strength, flexibility and efficiency — naturally lend themselves to thoughtful making.
PRODUCTION
Steam bending is one of those processes where speed serves the work. Fast rather than slow, it is efficient, enjoyable and never entirely foolproof, making it a particularly valuable use of a craftsman’s time.
The process seasons the timber as it bends, using only a fraction of the energy required in conventional kiln drying. Because the wood is worked green, before seasoning, it can be sourced directly from the forester, who is able to select pieces suited to the task, often from timber that might otherwise have little commercial use.
Steam bending works with the natural properties of wood rather than against them, allowing strength, economy and character to emerge through the making process itself.
DESIGNING FOR A GREEN ECONOMY
I work by the principle: “Is right, looks right.”
It keeps my feet on the ground and often leads me somewhere imagination alone would not.
So what is right? At this moment in time, designing for a green economy feels both the most necessary and the most interesting form of rightness. Design has two essential roles here: finding practical solutions and making them desirable. Resistance to change may be one of the greatest barriers to a sustainable future.
A green solution should be holistic. It should not deliver only one positive outcome, but many. How much pleasure can it bring to the user, the maker and those involved in its production? Can its environmental impact be beneficial too?
In searching for this balance between use, making and material, an elegant core idea often emerges. Taking that idea forward means thinking carefully about how materials themselves wish to be used. Here, being both designer and maker is invaluable.
Some technologies — solar panels and batteries, for example — are still developing and may, for now, limit our options. But most things in the physical world are not at a technical frontier. They have existed for centuries and remain open to endless reinterpretation: chairs, houses, cups, tables — the objects that shape our daily lives and cultural identity.
We are not running out of chairs. But rethinking them keeps our culture alive, relevant and, one hopes, optimistic.