One of my first regular freelance design jobs in the early 1980s was with a company in Stratford-on-Avon who had a furniture, lighting, and interiors showroom. They wanted to increase their sales and so they took on an agency with Wrighton kitchens. I knew the people that ran the showroom and so I landed the job of measuring up and drawing their customers' plans. In those days 'Wrighton International' was THE quality British kitchen; they were nearly always specified by architects for any quality project, and they were the leaders in going over to the metric system - most British fitted furniture was then still planned and sold in feet and inches. I just loved Wrighton - they were modern, they were metric, and they were beautifully made.


Meanwhile I still had my workshop where I was designing and making bedroom furniture for Heal's, and after that a long series of nearly sixty bespoke pieces for Christopher Hyland, a furnishing company in New York. Any time left over was devoted to making and exhibiting sculpture. Later I met Alan Minchin who has a joinery company in the Cotswolds, and we started working together on fitted furniture projects, I doing the designing and Alan and his team doing the making and installation. This arrangement worked very well, and from time to time, if the right job comes along, we are still doing this nearly 30 years later.
Here's an example of what we do:








































Alan and I now have an 'Eckersley & Minchin' website : www.eckersleyandminchin.co.uk