The workshop story
Nestled amongst the Chiltern hills of Buckinghamshire, the Davison Highley workshops are where each piece of our furniture is designed, developed and manufactured to the highest levels of quality and longevity. Here is it’s story and the story of each piece of furniture we make.
Old North Works as it was in the early 1900s
Old North Works has been the site of furniture manufacture for over 100 years and Davison Highley is proud to be continuing its legacy. Davison Highley has been on this site for over 40 years now, originally using just a small area, we now encompass the majority of the main building.
Design Department
We use both computer aided design (CAD) and traditional hand drawing skills.
Each piece of furniture begins life in our design department. Whether it’s designing and developing new products, liaising with clients to produce furniture to their requirements or coordinating with the workshop on furniture manufacture, its all done here.
Frame shop
Each frame is hand built to order
Our skilled craftsmen in the frame shop build each piece of furniture specifically to order. The frame forms the skeleton for each design and as such it’s important that it’s strong and robust.
Foam shop
Foam is applied to the frames using water based glues.
The next stage is to take the finished frames and to apply foam. We use multiple layers of different density combustion modified foams to achieve the perfect level of comfort and sit appropriate to each design.
Upholstery shop
Upholstery material is cut then sewn
Once foamed, the furniture enters the upholstery shop. The upholstery material is selected and cut to templated patterns, before being sewn together.
The cover is carefully fitted to the frames
Once sewn the covers are fitted onto the frames. As each piece is upholstered to the highest standards it’s not uncommon for the covers to be taken off and further tailored to achieve the perfect fit. Decorative top stitching is applied followed by the final upholstery process.
Finishing shop
We take great pride in our furniture from inception to delivery.
The finishing shop is the last stop for the furniture in the workshop. Legs are picked and fixed on before the furniture is inspected and wrapped. Its then loaded onto one of our vans for delivery to you.