About
Est. 1977
Matthew Burt is one of Britain's most respected furniture designer-makers. Since 1977, he and Celia have built the workshop together, from a corrugated iron shed to Lime Tree Studio & Workshops in Hindon: nearly fifty years of making things that last.
Beginnings
An 18-foot corrugated iron shed
Fresh from finishing my furniture-making apprenticeship and with intent shining in our eyes, Celia and I went jobbing gardening. We saved enough to put down a deposit on a semi-detached wreck with a derelict garden. With no dosh but a lot of love, ambition, resourcefulness and a tad of imagination, we cobbled together an 18-foot corrugated iron shed from gleaned materials and grandly named it Albany Workshop.
Equipped with a pot-bellied stove, a skip-retrieved door as a workbench, and a dust extraction system consisting of back door open, front door open: hey presto. With little in our pockets save a penknife and tenacity, and peppered with a compulsive need to create, it began.
Growing
Six apprentices. Several recessions.
In the mid-1980s, ten years after first picking up a chisel, we took on our first apprentice. One became two, then three, four, five and six. Recessions came and went; armed with the support of our clients, we fought to retain the other of our most precious resources: our makers.
I began to spend as much time at the drawing board as at the workbench, until the distinction between the two faded. We danced with debt, rode our luck and seized our opportunities. Celia's grasp of the regulatory world complemented the burgeoning skills of the makers and the designer.
Today
Lime Tree Studio & Workshops, Hindon
Inadvertently, we had been following Marcel Duchamp's advice: that an artist should change their workshop every decade. Albany Workshops eventually gave way to Lime Tree Studio & Workshops in the south Wiltshire village of Hindon.
We trusted ourselves, my designs and the handing on of the skills necessary to manifest them. We are doing so by being designers and makers of twenty-first century English furniture, designed in Wiltshire, made in Wiltshire from predominantly English timbers. At the core of what we do is you.
We had sought a twenty-first century relevance
for our eighteenth-century business model.
The approach
Matthew was born into a South Wiltshire farming family. He read Natural History at university before apprenticing with Richard Fyson. The combination gave him chalk under his fingernails, a respect for natural systems and the tenacity required to pursue excellence in making.
From the start, he and Celia chose to work directly with clients: no galleries, no retailers. They believe that closer dialogue makes better work. The only place to commission or buy a Matthew Burt piece is from Matthew Burt.
The work
Work ranges from a single shelf to a complete houseful. Each piece is one of a kind, or at least one at a time. The process begins with a visit, to see the setting, understand the brief and find the right timber. Matthew designs with posterity in mind: he thinks about the grandchildren who will one day squabble over the legacy of the piece.
The furniture is in private homes across Britain and beyond, and in the permanent collections of the Ashmolean Museum, the Courtauld Gallery, the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge and the Crafts Study Centre. Other commissions have included the executive suite at MI6 and Salisbury Cathedral.
Sinuous furniture celebrates the quirks and curiosities of ‘maverick’ British trees
Emma Park, Financial Times House & Home, February 2025
The commissioning process was a joy from beginning to end. Matthew came and spent the time needed to get a feel for what the room needed, both in terms of the style of the piece and the wood he would use. We were given a timetable of how the work would progress and when it would be delivered. Every stage was completed as promised and the work delivered on time and within budget.
The result is a wonderful tiger oak chest of drawers, the design of which allows the wood to display its extraordinary qualities. It is a very modern piece of design and craftsmanship, which is rooted in a thorough knowledge of cabinet-making traditions. A piece which sits happily in an old house, creating within the room a conversation between the old and the new, on the timeless nature of well-crafted wood.
Lindsey and John Hoole
Get in touch
Whether you have a commission in mind or simply want to visit the workshop and see the work, we are glad to hear from you.