For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure of stumbling across the Galvin Brothers, they make beautiful well-made furniture. The brother team, Matt and Andrew, formed back in 2012 and built on their Father’s 61 years of joinery and cabinet making experience. Though this article isn’t about furniture, it’s filed under our The Wardrobe section as the brothers have teamed up with local clothing manufacturer Wayside Flower to produce a small collection of utility work wear. We sat down with Matt Galvin to find out more.
The first obvious question to ask Matt seems to be why the departure from furniture; ’Most of our furniture work has been a very organic process for us, we’ve always been quite whimsical and we’ve designed what we wanted to design. We were using joiner’s aprons and our work has always had a strong utilitarian principle behind it, so it seemed natural to move towards making workwear. All the items have a functional use within the work we do’
Listening to Matt this functional element seems to flow through this collaboration, so for instance one of the wood turners who works for Galvin Brothers happened to be wearing an old fisherman’s smock along with a scarf to stop the wood shavings going down the neck of the smock. ‘We looked at that and started to experiment how we could modify a traditional fisherman’s smock to see how it would suit work with wood. As with all design it’s about looking at the world around you and seeing how you can make things work better.’
In less romantic terms Matt admits the move was also motivated by diversifying and allowing people to discover his and his brothers work in a variety of different guises and avenues. The relationship with their collaborators Wayside Flower emerged in as one those ‘natural twitter’ relationship. Matt had been following them for a few years and saw the occasional exciting thing from them on social media. Then when the project came along they seemed like the ideal people to get in touch with. ‘I knew they did utility wear, I knew the story would fit’. Matt tells me they were so excited about the project and soon ideas started very naturally flowing between Galvin Brothers and Wayside Flower.
I ask how he had found designing clothing as opposed to furniture. Matt found it surprisingly natural and a fantastic journey, he started life as a graphic designer before turning to furniture design and he found himself returning to consider his design principles and exploring what he loved about modernist design. It became apparent quickly that the methodology behind Galvin Brothers and Wayside Flower were the same, only the material differed.
Talking of materials, durable working materials were selected such as the heavy twill used in the joiner’s apron, to be precise a 400gsm 100% Lancashire Cotton twill. Then thinking of the working life of the garments, such as heading to a drizzly timber yard, Matt wanted to explore using a waxed canvas. Seeking out samples from another British manufacturers a high quality yellow waxed canvas was found that Matt says sits so well with the brand. Then for the Draftsman’s Roll a quality denim, the ultimate working material. Matt says though not tailored the garments are made of that quality heavy material that moulds to you as you wear them, ‘it’ll take the crease you give it and become yours’.
To check out both the collection and Galvin Brothers furniture visit www.galvinbrothers.co.uk and to find out more about Wayside Flower and see their work visit www.waysideflower.co.uk .
Interview by Morgan Hamilton-Griffin
The Holborn 