Designer, furniture maker, sculptor and educator Marc Fish has built an international reputation bending wood into forms that scarcely seem possible. Alex Leith visits his Newhaven studio and school, where 16 students help create sculptural pieces, some functional, others far from it, that blur boundaries between craft, design and fine art

Alex Leith: Looking around your workshop, it’s difficult to imagine you doing anything else for a living. But I understand that this wasn’t your first career…

Marc Fish: Not even close. I left school at 16 without much idea what I wanted to do and somehow ended up working in a bank. Everyone around me thought I’d landed a great job, but within a couple of weeks I knew I’d made a mistake. 

Outside work I became obsessed with restoring Volkswagen Beetles and campers. Eventually I was earning more money at weekends restoring cars than I was during the week in the bank, so in 1996 I handed in my notice. My manager told me it was the biggest mistake I’d ever make. I’ve made many mistakes, but that wasn’t one of them.

Restoring cars taught me metalworking and problem-solving, but I gradually realised I enjoyed making strange sculptures from old car parts more than restoring the cars themselves. That was the turning point. I wanted to create my own work rather than recreate somebody else’s.

AL: Was furniture always part of the plan?

MF: I thought furniture might be easier than becoming a sculptor. I soon discovered it wasn’t easier at all – just different. From the beginning I never really separated sculpture from furniture. The two have always fed each other.

Those early years were difficult. I had work in three independent shops in Brighton and, within a few months, all three went bust. One closed with my work still inside. I never got it back. That forced me to rethink everything. I studied furniture making, worked with a cabinet maker to learn the fundamentals of craftsmanship, but I also discovered that nobody was teaching the things I really wanted to know. That’s why the school exists today. We teach the course I wish I’d found 25 years ago – traditional craftsmanship combined with design, experimentation and material science.

We only ever have 16 students at a time because we want everyone immersed in the process. They’re not simply learning to cut joints or use machinery; they’re learning how to think like designers. Technique is essential, but curiosity is just as important. If all you teach is craftsmanship you’ll produce competent makers. If you encourage experimentation, people begin pushing the discipline forwards.

AL: Your work often looks as though it’s grown rather than been made. The forms feel completely natural, yet they’re achieved through an almost scientific process. How does that begin?

MF: It starts with understanding the material. We use timber sliced into sheets around 0.6 millimetres thick, called ‘veneers’, then glue those layers back together in the same sequence they came from the tree. It behaves like a completely new material. The pieces still look like solid timber because the grain runs naturally through, but they can be formed into shapes that simply aren’t possible with conventional woodworking.

People often compare it to steam bending, but laminated veneers give us much greater control. We glue each layer together, place the whole bundle into a vacuum bag over a mould and remove the air. Atmospheric pressure does the work for us, pressing every layer evenly into the form while the glue cures. 

AL: Does everything begin with drawings?

MF: Not necessarily. I sketch constantly – usually on tracing paper, sometimes on an iPad – but many ideas begin by simply bending material and seeing what happens. The timber has its own ideas. You can’t force it to do something it doesn’t want to do, so the design becomes a conversation between drawing, making and experimentation. Sometimes the material surprises you and the piece becomes stronger because of it.

We’ve spent nearly 20 years understanding how laminated veneers behave. There isn’t really a manual for what we do because nobody else works entirely this way. We’ve learnt how far something can bend, where the timber wants to move and where it won’t. That knowledge only comes from years of making.

AL: In an age of AI, CNC machining and mass production, why does craftsmanship still matter?

MF: Because craftsmanship isn’t about nostalgia. It’s about understanding a material deeply enough to discover something new. We use technology where it helps us, but technology is another tool, not a replacement for curiosity. You still need somebody asking questions, trying things that might fail and paying attention to what the material is telling them. That’s the exciting part.

AL: Nature seems to run through your work, and there are echoes of Art Nouveau…

MF: Art Nouveau has always fascinated me because it was so forward-looking. Hector Guimard’s Paris Métro entrances are extraordinary. They’re inspired by nature, but there’s something slightly unsettling about them as well. More than a century later they still feel modern. The danger is becoming nostalgic. You can’t simply recreate Art Nouveau in the 21st century. You have to understand why those designers were innovative and then continue pushing forwards. Guimard wasn’t interesting because he drew elegant curves; he was interesting because he completely rethought what public architecture could look like. That’s the lesson I take from him.

AL: And Antoni Gaudí?

MF: Oddly enough, I didn’t fully appreciate him until I visited Barcelona. Photographs never really prepared me for the buildings themselves. What fascinated me wasn’t just the appearance but his understanding of structure and physics. The way he developed curves using hanging chains was incredibly inventive.

By then I’d already found my own direction, so I wouldn’t say he influenced my work directly. But seeing his work gave me an even greater respect for designers who completely reinvent the language of their discipline.

The same goes for Zaha Hadid, Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth. What links them isn’t style but ambition. They all challenged accepted ways of thinking.

People often assume my house must be full of my own furniture. It isn’t. If I could fill it with anyone’s work it would probably be Pierre Chareau’s. His Maison de Verre remains one of the great masterpieces of 20th-century design. What inspires you isn’t always what you make yourself.

AL: You mean you don’t sleep in a Marc Fish bed, and hang pictures using a Marc Fish stepladder?

MF: There are only two pieces of furniture I’ve made in my house. A bog oak dining table, and a replica Hector Giumard chair I promised to make my wife for her 40th birthday, and finally presented to her on her 50th. We saw the originals in a show in Paris and couldn’t afford the £150,000 price tag. 

AL: Your palette of timbers has become surprisingly restrained.

MF: Deliberately so. We now work almost entirely with oak, bog oak, sycamore and walnut. Earlier in my career I used all sorts of exotic species, but eventually I realised I could say everything I wanted to say with those four. Limiting your materials can actually make you more inventive.

Bog oak is particularly special because every piece has lain underground for thousands of years. It’s discovered rather than harvested. Farmers in the Fens occasionally uncover these ancient trees when the water table changes, and what was once regarded as an inconvenience has become one of the world’s most extraordinary timbers. I love the idea that something which began life 4,000 years ago can become a thoroughly contemporary object.

AL: How often do your experiments fail?

MF: Constantly. One surface finish inspired by the layered steel used in Japanese samurai swords took us four years and hundreds of samples before we achieved the result we wanted. Every failed sample was numbered and annotated so we understood exactly why it hadn’t worked. People only ever see the finished piece in a gallery or a shop; they never see the failures behind it.

But failure isn’t something to avoid. It’s simply part of the process. Ideas come from everywhere – a seed pod, a flower, a piece of architecture, the line on a car, even a fabric. The challenge is translating that visual idea into wood.

AL: Your website lists 20 categories of sculpture, furniture, and objects that sit somewhere between. Does that distinction matter?

MF: Not really. People like categories because they make things easier to understand, but I don’t spend much time worrying whether something is art, craft or design. I just want to make work that feels progressive.

If I tell people I’m a furniture maker they imagine a shed at the bottom of the garden. If I say I’m a furniture designer they think I spend all day in front of a computer. Sometimes it’s easier just to tell people I’m a dentist.

The danger is becoming commercial in the wrong way. If something sells well it’s very tempting to keep making versions of it forever. I’d much rather move on to the next idea. Otherwise you’re repeating yourself rather than discovering something new.

AL: Contemporary craft seems to enjoy far greater visibility today than it did even ten years ago. Why do you think that is?

MF: I think collectors have become much more interested in process. They want to know how things are made, not simply what they look like. That’s definitely changed, particularly since Covid. People ask more questions now and they’re much more interested in the journey from raw material to finished object. I think that’s healthy.

Galleries have played an enormous role too. Sarah Myerscough, who represents my work, has done a huge amount to champion contemporary craft and place it alongside architecture and fine art. Good galleries don’t simply sell objects; they educate collectors and give makers the confidence to keep innovating rather than repeating themselves.

AL: It’s time for the Desert Island Discs question. What one piece of craftmanship or design would you take with you? 

MF (pointing up to a red Coca Cola cool-box on a shelf above his desk): I do love that 1951 cool-box, I bought it in an auto-jumble about 30 years ago. It’s one of my most prized possessions and one of the finest examples of industrial design I’ve ever seen – beautifully made, perfectly functional and still a joy to use. Every detail has been thought through. 

AL: I’ll throw in a lifetime supply of Coca-Cola.

MF: Laughs. That’s very kind of you. I’d also like my replica Guimard chair to sit on, please. I’d pull that out of a burning house!

AL: Done. Finally, what still excites you about coming into the workshop every morning?

MF: The fact that I still don’t know exactly what’s going to happen. Even after all these years the wood can still surprise me. You begin with an idea, but somewhere along the way the material pushes back and takes you in a different direction. Those are usually the moments when the best work happens.

Marc Fish: Solo Exhibition is on at Newlands House Gallery, Petworth, until Sept 6. His work can also be seen at Frieze Seoul (Sept 2026), PAD London (Oct 2026), Design Korea (Nov 2026), and Design Miami (Dec 2026). More at marcfish.com.