Name: Ben Fowler / Marque Furniture

Location: Newhaven, UK

Specialist materials: Wood.

Products: Furniture

Links [if available]: https://marquesussex.co.uk/

Ben is an experienced furniture designer and maker with successful product ranges for leading manufacturers such as Ercol, Marks and Spencers, Heals and Habitat as well as bespoke commissions and batch produced ranges that are promoted under the name Marque Sussex.

His established, collaborative approach to business and providing facilities, shared resources and opportunities for local apprentices is reflected in his vision for how the industry should function – ‘co-operation not competition’ provides a model that can be repeated in different localities, each providing relevant, vernacular designs that can support distinctiveness, contribute to the local distributed economy and a healthy environment.

He advocates for wood as a material and critiques the different facets of the furniture industry with the benefit of his considerable, practice-based knowledge and experience. He is keen to support diversity of products and the woods used noticing that woodlands should not be monocultures of oak (for example) but include the many other species that form the woodland landscape in the UK. Hitherto, objects and products should (in effect) manifestly observe, identify and integrate greater diversity in acknowledgment of our natural landscape and its variety. However he is very conscious of the role and importance (positively and negatively) of marketing and how this is focused on creating and / or serving consumer demands. 'Furniture can be like fashion' (industry), with the expectancy for seasonal change and turnover rather than regional product diversity and longevity.

Ben suggests that good design and well-made wooden furniture should last – ‘furniture production is complex’ and the brief for designers (often set by manufacturers and retailers) needs to evolve to consider greater complexity in support of diversifying the outcome and its impact.

In relation to his impact on nature through his practice, he affirms a reliance on suppliers and a need to trust their management to support the sensitive and considerate resource production – a process in which he ‘has no direct control’.