At its original launch Floating Bench got lots of attention and was featured in magazines like Wallpaper, House & Garden, Grand Designs, Homes & Gardens and the Garden Design Journal. It was hailed as a ‘design classic of the future’ by the Independent Weekend Magazine and was included as part of Liberty’s ‘Outdoor Living Collection’ in 2013. But it was the reaction it got though social media that really convinced us we had designed something special. I remember one of the many positive reactions we got at the time was from the Sitting Spiritually team.
What I couldn’t realise at the time was the dialogue that was going on behind the scenes at Sitting Spiritually - about wanting a more contemporary swing seat to complement their existing product ranges and to attract a new type of client who were commissioning garden designers to ‘design’ their outdoor environments - very much in the way people have done with interiors for many years. So, in short they remembered the Floating Bench and contacted me – via Twitter at first of course!
Needless to say you can’t build a good working relationship (or design a range of furniture) via Twitter alone and the conversations moved through emails to telephone conversations and eventually led to Martin, Siobhan and the rest of the Sitting Spiritually team and I meeting up to scope out what a Simon Thomas Pirie designed swing seat might look like.
In some ways the brief was rather tricky because although they did want something contemporary and striking in the way Floating Bench is, it also had to fit next to their current product range in terms of using similar materials, hardware, delivery and assembly regimes. It was a fine line to walk, especially as this was the first time Sitting Spiritually had asked a designer ‘in’ to design a piece. Previously their more traditional ‘organic’ swing seats had been created as a collaboration between Martin and his daughter Lucy, who is a talented fine artist.
I got told afterwards that Martin asked Siobhan “what happens if I hate it…?” Luckily he didn’t, he loved the designs and we agreed at that stage to proceed to a first full prototype to see what it would look like for real, but also test for stability and comfort. The new swing seat would use that two-tone scorched and natural oak combination again, which was one of the key elements that drew Martin and his team to us in the first place.
My other great wheez for that meeting was to bring a Floating Bench along so they could see it in the flesh. Although it had bubbled away nicely through 2013/14 in terms of press attention, sales had been modest and we realised that we had no profile in the garden furniture world, and that we’d have to work very hard to create one; we were known for our bespoke interior furniture. We decided to ‘float’ the idea past the Sitting Spiritually team of taking on the exclusive rights for the Floating Bench and the reaction was immediate and very clear…
"Simon had rather cleverly nipped out whilst I was in my office and when I emerged, there it was, sitting in my hall ….. The Floating Bench. My overriding impression was simply Wow! What a fabulous piece. He’d certainly done the trick!" Martin Young, Sitting Spiritually