Financial Times House & Home Feature.
FT House & Home Feature
We are delighted to share that David Colwell and Artisan Row have been featured in the Financial Times House & Home section.
The article explores the unique live-work community David has created on the edge of Presteigne: a small group of low-energy timber homes and workshops with a shared purpose and a close relationship between living and making.
For David, Artisan Row is not a departure from his furniture, but an extension of the same thinking. The buildings are shaped by many of the principles that have guided his work: respect for materials, structural clarity, low-impact design and the belief that good design should respond intelligently to the way we live.
Built from timber and carefully orientated around the sun, the homes and workshops at Artisan Row offer a practical example of how design can tread lightly while still feeling generous, warm and full of life. Each space supports both domestic life and creative work, allowing making, thinking and community to sit naturally alongside one another.
The feature also reflects on David’s wider career, from his early furniture designs to his long-standing commitment to sustainable making. His work has always been rooted in curiosity: how things are made, how materials behave, how people gather, sit, work and live.
Artisan Row brings these ideas into built form. It is a place where furniture, architecture, landscape and community come together, and where David’s belief in thoughtful, resourceful design continues to evolve.
Presteigne open studios 2026
Come and visit us during Presteigne Open Studios to see the workshop, sit in David Colwell’s furniture, make your own painted paper lampshade, and watch David demonstrate steam bending.
Presteigne Open Studios
We’re delighted to be taking part in Presteigne Open Studios this year, we’d love to welcome you to visit us at the workshop here on Artisan Row.
It will be a chance to see where the furniture is made, explore David’s studio and workshop, sit in the chairs and talk to David about his work. We will also be demonstrating steam bending, offering an insight into the key proces behind his beautifully crafted furniture.
Alongside this, we’ll be making cardboard Ellipse lampshades which visitors can draw and paint on before taking home.
Do come and say hello, spend some time in the workshop, and come and experience the furniture in the place where it is created.
28–31 August
11am–5pm
3 Artisan Row
Broadaxe Business Park
Presteigne
LD8 2BQ
+44 (0)1544 260547