The Remarkable Story of our National Chair: The Windsor
Stewart Linford
Furniture maker Stewart Linford draws on decades of experience creating ‘luxury in wood’ to inform and entertain audiences through humorous anecdotes enhanced by an array of limited-edition Windsor chairs.
After representing the UK in the first WorldSkills competition in Madrid in 1950, Stewart went on to gain a degree in wood science and earned a distinction for his thesis on traditional chair-making.
He started his own furniture-making workshop with clients including the National Trust, Harrods and aristocratic families around the world. Given the Queen’s Award for Enterprise in 2003, he was presented to Her Majesty at Buckingham Palace and received a royal visit to his workshops. He is a Liveryman of the Furniture Makers Company and has been made a Freeman of the City of London.
His speciality is creating chairs to commemorate great British worthies: using timbers from HMS Victory to build his Admiral’s Chair and timber from the Blenheim Palace estate to celebrate his hero, Winston Churchill.
A Windsor chair
He has won humorous speaking competitions and is a long-standing member of Toastmasters International. TV appearances have included programmes hosted by Michael Portillo, Adrian Edmondson and Chris Packham.
This will be an amusing and original talk giving the inside story of the furniture maker’s craft, the craftsmen and their clients, from rock stars to royalty.