Britton Timbers takes great pride in supplying the highest quality materials to artisans across Australia and around the world; to award winning craftsmen like those at Christian Cole Furniture, who are proving every day that there is a strong and growing market for superb quality, hand-crafted furniture.
But it goes further than that – Christian Cole himself is one of an increasingly rare breed of traditionally skilled furniture makers who understand the link between great design, sustainability and the highest standards of craftsmanship.
Christian says his business has evolved into a boutique design and manufacturing facility based on eco-friendly principles.
“We have four employees who are committed to producing furniture that is unique. Our customers know they are getting hand-crafted pieces featuring finger-jointing and mortice and tenon techniques that are hard to replicate in the marketplace.”
Christian’s furniture has been recognised at the highest level, with a curved audio-visual unit winning at the recent Australian Furniture Association Awards.
“We were pleased the awards programme recognised the quality and design and the difficulty involved in crafting the curves and joins in the audio visual cabinet,” Christian said.
“Also, the timber we used - beautiful American Walnut from Britton Timbers - really helped. It’s stable and has a deep, natural brown colour, which was important because we chose not to stain it.”
Britton Timbers and Christian Cole Furniture have a strong relationship in which the best timbers are discussed and selected to create the extra ‘wow’ that Christian’s customers have come to expect. In fact, Christian’s work was recently featured on the popular television show, ‘The Block’.
"AHEC works with designers around the world to promote the use of American Timbers and through them we were pleased to be able to assist DesignOffice in bringing their vision for the bar to fruition. The bar was a huge hit with Eat Drink Design Awards guests."
It’s fair to say Christian Cole has come a long way since his teen years when he started making furniture in his mum’s garage. Many years later, his Coburg premises say it all. Thoughtful, innovative design, traditional craftsmanship and intelligent use of the best environmentally-certified and recycled timbers is helping to create valued furniture that is being seen as art – collector’s pieces that will stand the test of time.
