Simon Harlow is an independent furniture designer and maker based in Glasgow who regards good design as a powerful element in the immediate and long term health of our local and wider environment. For The Future of Home, Harlow presented the Scott Table and Scott Chair for LDF – the first iterations in a striking ongoing series using both walnut and poplar in the same object.

Responding to the increasing fluidity of our living and working environments, the Scott chair is a little larger than normal, with a generous internal sitting volume. It can be used as a dining chair, a lounge chair or an office chair, all in one. The table is made to suit several functions too, with a hidden drawer, making it a good dining table, efficient office table or a high-end work table.

Timber furniture is typically presented as one colour and rarely with a deliberate use of bold and contrasting colours throughout. These pieces are explorations of the decorative possibilities when using highly contrasting walnut and poplar hardwood timbers. Both have very similar structural and dimensional variance within changing environments and so remain very stable over time.

“There is a tradition of the timber element in furniture being ‘as one’ because there is a material consistency. This has led to the idea that furniture must be one type of timber to allow the object to be read as a whole form. The perception remains that this is what solid timber furniture does look like; of course, it doesn’t have to. I am interested in what can be done outwith these confines.”