Do you want to buy some of the finest furniture made in Britain today?

Are you interested in the work of the finest furniture designers?

Do you want to commission the making of a single piece uniquely for you?

 In the early days of the Furniture Makers Guild, four eminent members of the British furniture industry - Lucian Ercolani, Anthony Heal, Edward Pinto and Ernest Race - proposed the introduction of an award scheme to encourage the design and making of the very finest quality furniture. The awards, to be known as Guild Marks, would bring prestige and publicity to their recipients and would build a record of the very best work of British Designers and Makers.

The proposal was adopted and the Guild Mark Scheme was born. Ever since a Jury has met several times a year to assay pieces submitted. If an item meets the Jury’s exacting standards of excellence in four criteria: design, materials, craftsmanship and function, a numbered enamelled disc, the ‘Guild Mark’, is presented to the maker to fix to the piece. This establishes provenance and adds value for future generations. A certificate is presented to the maker and a copy is placed in the Guild Mark Register at Furniture Makers’ Hall. (On another page there is a list of all Bespoke Guild Marks as they are now known, and their holders with images of nearly all the pieces.)

We hope that everyone wishing to commission an original piece of furniture of the highest quality will use this site to compile a short list of bespoke furniture makers to contact. They all are not only masters of their craft but their pride in what they do makes them very approachable people.

The Guild Mark Scheme’s original intention was to recognize equally the best of craftsman made furniture and the best of the ranges made in considerable quantities by manufacturing firms and marketed through the retail and contract trade. However by the early 1990s, the guild marks had come to be awarded almost entirely to makers of single pieces of bespoke furniture.

It was therefore decided to have a separate award for manufacturers and the Production Guild Mark was launched in 1993. Now called the Manufacturing Guild Mark, a firm as a whole, its ‘ethos’, its factory and, of course, its products are assessed, also by a Jury.

On the Manufacturing Guild Mark part of the site you will see the products, furniture and beds, made by some of the finest British manufacturers. This gives you a valuable purchasing guide, especially as there are links to all the firms’ own websites.

In 2007 yet another chapter of the Guild Mark history began. The Design Guild Mark was created to mark and reward the work of the finest designers working in Britain and the best of British designers working abroad.