Linley: My love of British design
Royal is on a mission to promote artisans and craftsmen
IT WAS a hot, summer sports day at Bedales. But David Linley, son of Princess Margaret and the Earl of Snowdon, was not competing on the athletics track, he was under his father’s car in the school’s car park helping mend his broken down Aston Martin DB5.
By the time father and son had fixed it an enthusiastic crowd had gathered. But they were not admiring the car – instantly recognisable as the model favoured by James Bond – they were fascinated by the process of stripping and rebuilding, by the way component parts came together to make a perfect whole.
Although David Linley had by then spent many happy boyhood hours tinkering alongside his father in the privacy of Snowdon’s workshop, this was the first time he can remember seeing its impact on others.
Linley, 52, has subsequently pursued the magic of designing and making – of restoring and repairing – all his working life. From surviving on baked beans and biscuits as a fresh-from-college member of a craft co-operative in a railway siding in Dorking, Surrey, he has built an empire that bears his name in the best of British craftsmanship, perhaps with a little help from his Royal name.
Now he’s hosting what has been described as ‘the smallest Great Exhibition ever’ in his London flagship showroom. Among the friends turning up to the launch party was Elizabeth Hurley, keen to see the ambitious undertaking, which has involved getting a McLaren sports car, a JCB, a 200-year-old printing press, an ejector seat and an Enigma machine on loan from Bletchley Park into the Pimlico rooms, which more usually house his bespoke furniture and interiors. THE list of exhibitors reads like a roll call of great British brands, including Purdey guns, Lobb the shoemaker, hatter Lock and Co, and CW Dixey, the company which made Winston Churchill’s famous spectacles. It’s an eclectic collection with one thing in common: all the companies on show are fit for a king, or at least the grandson of one.
Which is, of course, Linley’s unique selling point. He is the Royal Carpenter, the Queen’s nephew who flouted aristocratic convention 30 years ago to work in wood, designing and making furniture. He still sits behind a sycamore inlaid mahogany desk he made aged 14.
He was not, he admits, much of a businessman at the start. ‘My teaching was primarily focused on making, it wasn’t about the pounds, shillings and pence,’ he says. ‘I remember being in college and being in business and there was just a weekend in between.
‘Our belief was that life happened at a workbench, not sitting in an office,’ he says today of the threeman co-operative in which he began his career in 1982. ‘We were making and selling, we were successful but we weren’t growing our business. I was lucky enough to have Dr Miriam Stoppard as a client, a guru, and she was the one who grasped the nettle.
‘We formed a company and a board with her as MD and opened our first shop in October 1985. I invested £2,000 or £3,000 of my own money and we have been consistently underfunded ever since! I went to Barclays for my first funding and my bank manager looked at me and said firmly, “Just so you know we are not a venture capitalist”, which was a very nice way of putting it.’
Although the firm has seen turbulent times, its high-end clients may be more recession-proof than most.
Linley is clear that the start of the credit crunch was hard, but says the company’s British style is in demand in lucrative markets in Moscow, Nigeria and the Middle East, adding: ‘Today there’s more of a sense of optimism than there was in 2008. I think the market is coming back.’
That is partly the inspiration for the exhibition. The idea grew from a conversation Linley had with George Bamford, head of Bamford Watch Department and a scion of the wealthy family behind JCB diggers, as they cycled together near their Gloucestershire homes 18 months ago. The men share a passion for British crafts and believed they could give them a global shop window in the Linley flagship store.
‘We should promote and celebrate and enthuse the artisans and craftsmen of Great Britain,’ says Linley. ‘There is something reassuring about British-made products and their inventiveness and ingenuity, their creative spirit and eccentricity and their British wit and charm.
‘There is a resurgence in demand for pieces made here. International clients are buying into the history and heritage of Britain and the stories involved, such as Globe Trotter luggage, whose corners are still crafted on Victorian presses, or the ancient contraption Lock and Co uses for measuring hats.
‘We need to find a wider audience to understand and maintain the skills and expertise we have in this country using the tools available to us, such as this exhibition. If we do I am sure they’ll continue to thrive.’
Many of the firms have, of course, already been handed down the generations. So will his own son Charles, 14, lead the family firm?
‘Well, he does have an engineering bent, which is encouraging and he is one of our most stalwart followers on Facebook,’ says Linley. ‘Put it this way, he can definitely man the tills when he’s old enough.’