This is the second of two articles looking back at the interiors that have shaped the years since Silverlining was founded. The first covered 1985 to 2005, defined by restraint challenging excess, and intimacy challenging spectacle. This piece continues the story, covering 2005 to 2025, the twenty years that have shaped interior design into what it is today.

Silverlining is a place where traditional hand skill and new technology exist side by side, each given room to do what it does best. That is not a compromise, and it is not two things in tension with one another. It is how the workshop has evolved, and how the craft continues to move forward.

The idea that a tabletop could carry its own decoration, rather than simply be covered, took hold once veneering made it possible. Thin sheets of wood, cut with precision arrived in the sixteenth century, meant a surface could carry pattern and detail directly, rather than relying on carving or paint

Alex Gilbert is Silverlining's US Director, having joined after six years as director of a contemporary design gallery. She spends much of her time travelling between the cities shaping American taste, and shares her view on where the US luxury furniture market is heading.

A yacht is one of the most demanding environments a piece of furniture will ever inhabit. Rooms can feel expansive, walled in glass and open to the water, yet every room within them is shaped by limits. Furniture made for this world must hold its own against shifting light, salt air, and the constant, if gentle, movement of the sea.

Almost every piece of furniture a client commissions is designed around their own experience of it. The sofa they will sit on, the bed they will sleep in, the desk they will work at. A games table is different. It is designed, first and foremost, around the experience of the people gathered at it. That single distinction changes every decision in the brief.

What does it take to bring a piece of bespoke furniture into existence? Sometimes, the answer begins further back than you might expect.

Following the announcement of his MBE for services to Design and Innovation in Furniture Making, Silverlining founder Mark Boddington reflects on forty years of craft, the people behind the work, and his vision for the future of Silverlining and Studio SL.

In the most resolved interiors, the wall is not the last decision. It is the first. The commission that every other element is designed in response to. When that approach is taken, the room changes character entirely.

Most design processes move from object to surface. The pieces are chosen, the scheme develops, and the wall is resolved at the end. That sequence is understandable. It is also the reason why so many interiors, however carefully considered, feel as though something is missing.

Every May, London Craft Week brings makers, collectors and the curious together around a shared conviction: that craft matters, and that the skills behind exceptional objects deserve to be seen, understood and celebrated.

This year Silverlining spent the week at Sotheby's, presenting three pieces from the Layers in Time collection. On Saturday 16 May, Kate Summerfield, Silverlining's Leather Team Leader, gave a live demonstration as part of Sotheby's Festival of Craft.

Marquetry has a history stretching back centuries. It reached its golden age in the courts of seventeenth century France and England, where master cabinetmakers used paper thin veneers to create surfaces of extraordinary intricacy. Then industrialisation arrived, demand collapsed and the craft spent much of the twentieth century in quiet decline.

What is happening now is something different. Marquetry is not simply surviving. It is being reimagined.

For centuries, drawing rooms were arranged around high tables designed for upright posture, formal occasion and the ritual of afternoon tea. Then, gradually, something shifted. The twentieth century brought a new way of living, easier, less ceremonial, more horizontal. Sofas got deeper. Chairs got lower. And the table at the centre of the room followed suit.

The coffee table, in its truest sense, is a piece of furniture born from relaxation.

Silverlining was founded in 1985. In the four decades since, the world of interior design has been reshaped many times over. Movements have risen and receded, and with them, ideas of what luxury, comfort and beauty should feel like.

Sustainability is often discussed in broad terms. In a workshop, it becomes something far more precise. It is a question of materials, of decisions, and ultimately of how long a piece is made to last. For a studio working with the finest natural materials, creating pieces designed to last generations, the question deserves a more considered answer.

Storage furniture was not always expected to be beautiful. For centuries, its purpose was purely functional. Chests held linens. Cabinets secured valuables. Sideboards stored serving pieces. These were practical objects, built for durability and capacity rather than aesthetic consideration. The credenza changed this.

For centuries, designers have looked to nature for inspiration. At Silverlining, we look to it as blueprint for design. The natural world is governed by principles refined over millennia. Growth patterns, erosion, movement, layering. These forces shape landscapes, plants and materials, and they continue to inform the way we design and build furniture today.

Rye straw is not an obvious choice for furniture. Hollow, fragile, seasonal. Yet for centuries, craftspeople have recognised its potential. When split lengthwise and laid by hand, straw becomes marquetry. When viewed end-grain (the cut end of the hollow stalk), it reveals a subtle geometry that catches and reflects light in unexpected ways. The Lumen Side Table is built around this potential.

Some objects quietly disappear from interiors as tastes evolve. Game tables never do.
Across centuries, styles, and technologies, they continue to reappear in contemporary homes. While many furniture typologies are subject to cycles of fashion, the game table occupies a curious position. It is both deeply historical and consistently contemporary, tied not to style but to ritual, gathering, and craftsmanship.

For Studio SL, Silverlining's creative design studio, an unexpected form is not a stylistic choice. It is the result of asking a harder question than the brief requires, and refusing to stop until the answer is both structurally sound and visually complete. Two decades of work across bespoke commissions and limited editions have produced furniture that bends perception, revives techniques on the edge of extinction, and solves structural problems that have no precedent.

Leather is one of the oldest and most extraordinary materials in the world. It ages with intention, deepening in character with every passing year. In the hands of a skilled craftsperson, it transforms from a natural hide into something that transcends its origins, acquiring structure, texture, and a life of its own.