Hot desk

Andrew Whittaker is the founder of Hyrst , a social enterprise that makes beautiful, low impact furniture and homewares using locally sourced raw materials and a workforce of skilled local makers and the instructors and inmates of Warren Hill, a category C men’s prison on the Suffolk coast.

I meet Andrew at Marsh Barn Café, situated next to the RSPB reserve at Hollesley, and as the rain lashes against the windows we can only just make out the outline of HMP Warren Hill that sits overlooking the marshes opposite, and every time the door swings open, I keep expecting Magwitch to be blown inside. It is an atmospheric setting and over a warming brew, Andrew, who lives in the village, explains how it is that the inmates of this high security prison are helping him to make stylish minimalistic furniture. “I have always designed and made furniture for my own home and several years ago set up a business with a friend, using reclaimed materials to build tables, benches and other small items. Once that business had run its course, and freshly inspired by inheriting my grandfather’s old woodworking tools, I decided to try something different. With Hyrst, the goal is to design and make beautiful, long-lasting furniture, drawing only on the people and materials close to our home here on the Suffolk coast. To keep the geographical - and carbon - footprint as low as possible.”

As an antidote to the mass-produced flat-packed furniture that is widely available but lacking a story or any provenance to call its own, Andrew needed his products to have complete traceability. “I wanted to make a table using a sycamore felled just up the road, or a set of chopping boards from an old Suffolk oak that had succumbed to the winter storms.” Some of the timber used by Hyrst is supplied by Suffolk Wildlife Trust, which operates a carefully controlled woodland management scheme across several of their sites. “I love the fact that I can visit SWT, see exactly where the tree was felled, know that it is milled and dried on site and then transported directly to Warren Hill. That’s about as low mileage as it gets!”

Andrew was also keen to work with the local community and after hearing that there was a large woodworking workshop inside Warren Hill, set up a meeting with the industries manager. “The guys at Warren Hill now manufacture a range of Hyrst designs in their workshop. I make and take in a sample product, along with any drawings and the locally sourced timber, and they then create a steel template for that product, from which they can produce batches of items, from chopping boards to coat hooks to tableware.” Andrew pays the market rate for the items made in the workshop at the prison and this income is then used by Warren Hill to fund training qualifications that will upskill residents in preparation for their release.

As well as these smaller items, Andrew also designs bespoke furniture, working alongside Ben, a skilled local cabinet maker.

These pieces are beautifully crafted, and the design is Scandi-inspired simplicity at its best, his Bawdsey table and bench looking just as at home in a traditional Suffolk farmhouse as in a contemporary minimalist interior. The designs have been carefully considered with the circular economy in mind, using easily replaceable or recyclable parts. Andrew’s latest project, The Newcraft Desk, is a clever reinvention of flatpack furniture, a work-from-home desk that easily slots together using traditional open joinery and minimal fixings. The residents of Warren Hill rough cut the component parts from ash, whilst Ben does the joinery, fixings and finishing. “I wanted to create a piece of furniture that combines the craft, quality and longevity of handcrafted furniture with the accessible price point and convenience of self-assembly.” www.hyrst.co.uk

Andrew’s love of design and his passion for efficiency and sustainability all combine to make Hyrst furniture important. It is quality pieces like this that we should all strive to have in our homes. Honest, good-looking, durable. Heirloom flatpacks that can be assembled and reassembled as families grow and divide, each generation creating their own memories around the same much-loved kitchen table and sitting at the desk daydreaming about their future and whatever this has in store.

Andrew will be at the Little Makers Market, Unitarian Meeting House, Bury St Edmunds on Saturday 3rd June. His furniture is available online and is stocked by Vanil in Woodbridge.