Form to Function

With clean lines, curves and a bit of magic, an ex-pat Englishman now living in Broomfield designs striking furniture that is both practical and comfortable. By Kelly Smith

There's a saying that goes like this: He who works with his hands is a laborer. He who works with his hands and his head is a craftsman. He who works with his hands, head and heart is an artist. Andrew Muggleton is an artist. He combines extraordinary wood with satiny metal and frosted glass to create furnishings with spare, elegant lines. Dining room tables and chairs, console tables, beds, entertainment units, and "sets of drawers," he has crafted each with a nod to comfort and function and an eye toward beauty. Although Muggleton began practicing his craft only recently, it's been growing in his soul for years.

"As a boy," he relates, "I spent time in the garage with my dad, always knocking about with wood, playing with different designs."

Born near London, Muggleton received his engineering degree in Nottingham, and spent the next few years traveling the world as a design engineer and consultant. His work took him to Belgium, Germany and China, becoming fluent in German and Dutch along the way, before he returned to London.

His education and real-world experience had given him an understanding of engineering and manufacturing methods, which coalesced with his innate love of design. He had an epiphany and acknowledged that furniture design was his passion.

Muggleton says, "I believe we all have a path in life, it's simply a matter of finding it. Some people do it when they're quite young, others, maybe never. I think I was lucky enough to see mine relatively early."

With family in Colorado, and the captivating Rocky Mountains as a backdrop, he made the decision to move here and is now located in Broomfield. If he was going to make a go of his passion, he reasoned, he wanted a complete change of scenery to help accomplish it. He loves the opportunities in the United States, particularly the West.

"In England, the attitude is that if you work for yourself, it's a little to be looked down upon," he says. "You're not regarded as much until you have really made a name for yourself. But in the West, it's just the opposite - people really encourage your creativity, they offer support and encouragement, they act like it's a good thing to be out on your own, making a go of it. People are so optimistic out here.

" He thought about going to woodworking college, but after researching it realized he could outfit his entire workshop for the price of tuition. He did just that, along with clearing out the local bookstore of every woodworking reference book they carried. Largely self taught, he eschews standard woodworking courses. "I decided that if I took classes, I would come away making things that look just like everybody else," he says. "That's why people admire you, because they like the style in which you work."

Simplicity is a hallmark of Muggleton's design. He notes that keeping his design simple, avoiding the trap of filling empty space with unnecessary clutter, is one of his hardest and most rewarding challenges. His manufacturing methods can be complex and time-consuming, yet the end result is shapely and clean-lined.

Muggleton favors curves in his pieces, and one of the processes he uses to create them is centuries-old. He joins many thin layers of wood together, then places them on a mold and uses a vacuum press to exert tons of pressure and contort the wood into a new shape.

"This method actually creates a stronger piece than if you had simply cut a curved shape from a chunk of wood," he explains. "If you were to do that, you can't help but cut against the grain at some point, which introduces structural weakness into the form. Many layers, each cut on the grain then joined together, give the piece solidity. It's also a much more economical use of the wood."

You won't find a great deal of joinery on his work, either. He uses gravity and the natural weight of the wood to pull it together. When he does apply some type of joinery, it is in keeping with the style of the piece. He uses classic mortise-and-tenon techniques when it fits, wooden pegs in one of his tables, and stainless-steel rods in another. Muggleton's design focus is apparent when discussing embellishments of his work; while he tackles some upholstery, he sends out all but the most basic projects. "Why not let the experts do what they do best?" he shrugs.

Muggleton favors woods that out of the ordinary, including maple, in both the curly and bird's eye varieties. Heavy, dense and beautifully suited for furnishings, it's a growth defect in the wood that creates the distinctive features of the grain. Some of his other favorites come from Africa: Zebrawood grows in West Africa, and like it's namesake, is comprised of alternating dark and light bands. Another African hardwood, wenge, is deep brown and black, dense with a straight grain. "It's beautiful, but so coarse, it chews through blades," Muggleton says. "I'm constantly sharpening them."

Another striking exotic that he uses is lacewood, an Australian import. It possesses a unique grain even among exotic woods, with large "rays" that, when the wood is quarter sawn, reveal the distinctive characteristics. Frosted glass, stainless steel and aluminum, or "aluminium", as he refers to it, also find their way into his designs. Clean and spare, these materials augment the unusual wood beautifully.

Several of his designs are so innovative that he has patents pending on them. His arched table, for instance, appears to not so much rest on the floor as appear from underneath it. One can almost see the rest of the circle moving through the earth. Another, the interlocking console table, is composed of two arches, topped with a length of frosted glass. Two stainless-steel rods level the glass top and give symmetry to the design. His dining chairs are a paean to comfort. With soft, upholstered seats, the chair back soars nearly five feet into the air.

"They make for a nice place to rest while dining," he smiles.

In order to ensure that the comfort factor is taken care of, one of the tools he uses for larger projects is a scaled-down model. For a dining room set commission he is currently working on, he uses a small-scale wooden mannequin he built. He places the figure in a scale-size chair, then slides it around the table model to check that the ergonomics work properly.

"I look to see if knees bump into anything, that sort of thing," Muggleton says. Once the design is agreed upon, he will usually have a client keep the model in their home while the piece is being built, so that they have something tangible to look forward to.

His standards are exacting; he once designed and built a chaise lounge, then decided it was not what he wanted. "So I took an axe to it," he laughs. "The work was not up to what I wanted it to be, and why have something around that is less than you're capable of creating?" While a few bits ended up as scrap, most of the wood found new life as pickets on a side chair.

Since setting out on his own, Muggleton has enjoyed stellar success. He entered the Boulder Art Festival and came away with an award for Best of Show. His original furnishings have been shown at Pismo Contemporary Art Furniture in Denver and Beaver Creek, Colorado for the past two years. Pismo offers the finest in contemporary furniture, lighting, and functional art, making it a perfect fit for Muggleton's inventive philosophy.

"The quality of Muggleton's work is exceptional," relates Pismo owner Sandy Sardella. "His designs are original, and have beautiful lines. He's also a delight to work with."

Indeed, he made such an impression on the gallery that they invited him to submit his work for exhibition at the most recent Sculpture Objects and Functional Art, (SOFA), show in Chicago. SOFA is a gathering place for major international collectors and museums, architects, designers and art connoisseurs, held twice a year in Chicago and New York City. With thousands of visitors, SOFA garners millions of dollars in sales over the course of a single weekend. The show has rigorous entry criteria both for the galleries and the artists they represent. It bestows a mark of distinction on an artist simply to be accepted.

"It was an honor to be invited," says Muggleton.
Back home, word of mouth advertising is the order of business. "When a piece is installed in a home, that person's friends see it and away you go," he says. "Or the owner loves the work and tells ten others." His own home is largely furnished with his original work, providing a kind of ever-changing showcase for guests.

Lately, his surname has evoked references to muggles, non-magic characters in the popular Harry Potter series of books. While he does hail from that part of the world, and still carries an engaging UK lilt to his words, the similarities end there. Andrew Muggleton is a magic-user of the woodworker's art. With ingenuity and lots of hard work, he has turned his first love into a functional expression of his creative talent.