Hatcham is a minimal design created by Samuel Wilkinson for Decode London. Wilkinson is a graduate of Ravensboure College of Art & Design. He has won several awards including the RSA award and D&AD New Blood. The brief was to create a beautiful wooden stackable chair. The design has classically simple proportions in order to let the details create its identity.
The main characteristic is the cast aluminum leg bracket that attaches to the solid oak legs and oak veneered ply seat and back. The name of the chair derives from an old foundry that used to produce London’s casting named Hatcham Ironworks. In order to reflect on this historical tidbit, each chair has the old works cast lettering added onto the inside of the bracket.
Samuel Wilkinson’s recent works have been consistently excellent and surprisingly diverse. I see his latest design, Hatcham, as his greatest endeavor to date. The stackable chair has been designed and redesigned to an excessive extent, yet Wilkinson finds a way to incorporate his identity into this chair through an unconventional combination of materials and an elegantly unique aesthetic.