We shape our homes and then our homes shape us,’ said Winston Churchill. The look of our homes is fundamental to the way we live and an integral building block of our happiness. Just as our favourite music provides the soundtrack to our lives, so interior design gives us the backdrop.
For more than 40 years Andrew Martin has been at the frontline of British interior design. Founded in 1978, the company has pioneered some of its generation’s most significant trends. ‘Fusion interiors’ was the phrase coined to define Andrew Martin’s multi-layered, time-travelling signature style. Fabric and wallpaper, as much as furniture, have been at the centre of the brand’s story. Starting with classic kelims and the sorcery of Thai silk ikats through to the irreverent Porn Collection, a constant stream of innovation has driven the brand into every corner of the globe.
Just as our favourite music provides the soundtrack to our lives, so interior design gives us the backdrop.
The flagship showroom on London’s Walton Street has long been a Mecca for the design cognoscenti and clients have included princes, presidents, prime ministers, billionaires, movie stars, pop stars and sporting heroes.
Andrew Martin’s signature look is seen in hotels, such as the Mandarin Oriental, Ham Yard and the Hilton, and has played its role in films from James Bond and Harry Potter to Gladiator and Tomb Raider. The showroom’s playful atmosphere seems to resonate particularly with children, who are captivated by the weird and wonderful treasure box that is Andrew Martin, where a giant elephant stands next to a stuffed shark and bright neons jostle with 3,000-year-old Egyptian antiquities.
Exploration is at the heart of the Andrew Martin ethos. Founder Martin Waller has spent a lifetime combing the world’s wilder shores for treasures, trading with the Tuareg in Timbuktu and headhunters in Naga Land.
He has hunted for mammoth in Siberia and lost cities in Guatemala’s jungles. The richness of these remote, vanishing cultures has informed the company’s design philosophy and a juxtaposition of African tribal, Andean textile and Ming dynasty with grey flannel, leather Chesterfields and Pop Art provides the DNA of the Andrew Martin look. Over the years, collaborations with some of the world’s great designers, like Kelly Hoppen and Kit Kemp, have added an extra dimension.
Since 1996, Andrew Martin has organised the International Interior Designer of the Year Awards, now recognised as the Oscars of the interiors industry. Each year a panel of distinguished judges (who have included Gordon Ramsay, Twiggy, Tim Rice, Jo Malone and Thandie Newton) choose an overall winner. This fiendishly difficult task has produced some great names: Belgium’s Alex Vervoordt, South Africa’s Stephen Falcke, Hong Kong’s Steve Leung and Turkey’s Zeynep Fadillioglu. To follow up, Andrew Martin compiles the annual Interior Design Review, which showcases the work of the world’s top 100 designers.
Published by teNeues, the Review is described by The Times as ‘the Bible of Interior Design’. It’s one more reason why, despite the fickle and ever-changing weather of fashion, Andrew Martin remains a constant presence at the epicentre of global interior design.
