Shape design and hand make customisable furniture and home accessories.
Our Story.
Established in 2020, Shape Furniture Ltd is an independent company that designs and makes sustainable solid wood furniture and accessories.
Our designs draw inspiration from traditional British, Scandinavian and Japanese woodwork and are approached with a contemporary outlook to produce furniture that is simple, functional and long lasting.
Every piece is made to order and is designed to be customised or “shaped” with certain options provided as standard for the wood type, size or storage layout. Additional customisations or fully bespoke items are also available on request. Just get in touch here.
Everything is made in-house with great care, attention to detail and precision using a combination of traditional craft techniques and modern technologies.
We built our workshop in the Lake District at the start of 2021 using locally felled timber and sustainable sheep's wool insulation. The workshop is sited within a local timber yard operated by Witherslack Woodlands; a conservation forestry management company who sensitively manage over 300 hectares of British woodland, a large proportion of which are areas designated as Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) and are home to some of our most rare and valuable species.
A large proportion of their work is spent coppicing - an ancient practice which involves removing older trees and thinning cover in certain woodland ‘plots’. This practice promotes fresh tree shoot growth and maximises the light reaching the woodland floor. As a result wildflowers such as violets and primroses are encouraged to grow, providing an essential food source for butterflies and other insect life. In a few years the new shoots will have grown up and the process can start over again. These plots, all at different stages of maturity, are patchwork throughout the woodland and provide a variety of habitats for not only butterflies and moths, but also for birds and other insect species.
Read more about Witherslack Woodlands conservation practices here.
Our mission.
Our mission is to create furniture in the most sustainable way possible. From our base in the Lake District, our ultimate goal is to produce furniture that is entirely made using timber from the surrounding woodlands, where our environmental impact can be carefully monitored to ensure it only ever has a positive impact.
We want our furniture to last a lifetime, which is why everything is customisable to make sure it works perfectly for you. We reject the throwaway culture of cheap, poorly made furniture that will need replacing in a few years time. Everything we produce is made to last, can be easily maintained and repaired if damaged.
Ultimately, we strive to hit the correct balance between craft and industry, with an appreciation for the materials we use, care in what we produce and a clarity in what our impact is on the planet.
You can read more about our sustainable practices here.
Who we are.
Every process; from the initial sketch to the completed design, from sourcing and processing of timber to built product is done in-house, led by architect and designer-maker Jonathan Beeby, founder of Shape Furniture Ltd.
Jonathan trained as an architect in Newcastle University and worked at a number of leading UK practices in London. With a great passion for design and making, Jonathan spent most of his spare time making furniture, deriving joy from the tangible scale and tactile nature of woodworking that architecture could not provide. Jonathan started to explore the possibilities of turning his passion into his work and exploring how his architectural skill-set could be translated into a small-scale entrepreneurial business. He founded Shape Furniture Ltd in 2020 and set up his new workshop in the Lake District at the beginning of 2021.