Company history
Chris Baylis, principal of The Real Wood Furniture Company is passionate about the furniture made by the company, about his music and about ‘Scrumpie-pup’, the second dog of furniture and meeter and greeter at the company’s showrooms.
Since opening in 1989, The Real Wood Furniture Company established a reputation for quality, attention to detail and integrity, attracting customers from far and wide to view and become owners of pieces from their unique collection.
After graduating from Surrey University in 1976 with a degree in German, Swedish, and economics, Chris chased rock-and-roll dreams as a guitarist. Realizing the financial challenges in the life of a musician, he took various short-term jobs to support his musical ambitions. It was during this time that he met a successful antiques dealer who tasked him with sourcing as many antique English country chairs of various styles as he could find. This was an era when the antiques trade was in full flow and Chris became such an expert at procuring high-quality antique chairs that he was soon buying for himself as well as for his dealer friend.
Over the next few years Chris developed a love for form and finish as he handled literally thousands of antique Windsor and rush seated chairs. His presence was so ubiquitous that he became well known in the trade as ‘The Chairman’. Even members of his band at the time played their part in the business, stripping and polishing sets of chairs in the outbuildings of the house they shared outside Farnham.
Music was not left on the ‘back seat’ however and with his new band ‘SIAM’ he signed to A&M records in 1979, headlining gigs at London’s Marquee Club as well as supporting bands such as Squeeze and The Ramones. The antiques trade was in full flow, and so was his music!
As the years progressed, he started to buy and sell better and better pieces of country furniture. Handling and selling over time Chris gained an increasing knowledge of proportion, style, design and finish. By the time his main ‘buyer’ retired, he was able to take on the mantle as one of the biggest suppliers of matched sets of country chairs to the antiques trade, with a stock of well over 1,000 chairs in a burgeoning business.
It was during this time that he also set up his own recording studio and engineered and produced for bands such as Red Box, Maddy Prior, Automatic Dlamini (John Parish & PJ Harvey) and more. He spent a rewarding and interesting two weeks playing guitar at Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios on the ‘Big Vern’ album, ‘Lullabies’, produced by John Cale… heady times in furniture and music!
1989 saw the first downturn in the antiques trade and a general ‘shake up’ of the market partly brought about by regulatory changes. Several of Chris’ American trade clients began to complain about the cost of the antique sets of chairs he was supplying and the lack of comfort. They also noted the lack of a properly made ‘reproduction’ (we hate the word!) on the market and Chris was encouraged to ‘sort the problem’. Thus, he set about re-designing initially a Windsor side chair and a ladder-back side chair combining the best features of the many chairs he had handled over the years into two new chairs, larger in form than their period counterparts and providing greater comfort….and so the ‘die was cast’.
A methodology and ‘blueprint’ were established whereby the aesthetic appeal of the period chairs was retained whilst also fulfilling ‘functionality’ for the size and lifestyle of late 20th century man and woman. Chair and cabinet makers alongside polishers were sought out who could work to Chris’ exacting standards. This ‘blueprint’ led to the making of a wider range of chairs, tables and dressers for an ‘evolving’ antiques trade.
Chris’ musical career saw him forming ‘The Guitar Orchestra’ and the release of their first CD in 1990 saw the combining of his passions, with the album cover depicting an ‘orchestra’ of antique chairs, each with a guitar laid against it on a deserted beach in South Wales. The Guitar Orchestra played at arts centres up and down the country, including a week in the foyer of of the Barbican Centre and ‘an evening with…’ at ‘The Purcell Room’.
A new ‘furniture’ problem however began to emerge. Chris’ American trade customers started to place more emphasis on reducing costs. But this clashed with his ethic of focusing on making the best pieces possible. The two goals were ultimately unreconcilable, and it was at this point that the company started to engage directly with end market customers, exhibiting at lifestyle and interiors shows up and down the country. This naturally led to Chris opening his first retail premises in 1996 in Woodstock. With growing success, he moved 4 years later to larger and more centrally located premises which put the company well and truly on the map.
A fully operational business serving a retail clientele allowed Chris at the time to expand on his traditionally based designs. And it was at this point that his love of the simplicity of early Chinese furniture design, Arts and Craft’s furniture and his passion for beautifully grained English timbers began to find expression.