Quotes from David Linley

Usually, when people think of marquetry, they think of Dutch 17th-century furniture with inlaid flowers and jugs. Our goal is to break down the barriers between old and new, to combine traditional marquetry techniques with a modern idiom.

We should promote and celebrate and enthuse the artisans and craftsmen of Great Britain.

Someone did once bow to me, and my mother immediately told them off. Although whether she was prompted by the breach of protocol or the fact I enjoyed it a little too much, I really couldn't say.

Beautiful engineering always held a fascination for me.

People are fed up with mass production.

Nothing tests a marriage more than insomnia or snoring.

I'm incredibly boring and logical, so if I have a problem I will try and fix that problem.

I used to sit and draw in the evening with a couple of crates of beer. That makes the ideas flow.

Our chief aim is to make beautiful things that will last forever.

It's extraordinary how a physical disability makes people think that somebody is frail.

Food and wine are my extravagances.

I over-caffeinate in the morning, herbal tea after lunch and at 7 P.M., it's nice to have a glass of white wine.

It's far nicer to congregate around a card table than a television. It takes me back to my childhood, when we'd play family card games like Racing Demon.

I really do build furniture to be used, you see, to be lived with.

For the novice furniture collector, buying antiques can seem a rather daunting prospect. Nobody wants to feel that they may not make a wise choice and that ultimately they could be throwing their money away. The main thing is that you should always buy something first and foremost because you like it.

There is something reassuring about British-made products and their inventiveness and ingenuity, their creative spirit and eccentricity and their British wit and charm.

Good design is probably something that has been thoroughly thought through to a point of resolution.

When I would visit my Granny as a little boy, we would play this game of closing our eyes and describing everything around us. The color of a tie. The shade of a cloth. It was really quite a wonderful way to learn how to look, to notice things and to appreciate what is around you.

I love wood. I love its permanence, its way of changing hue over the years, its way of expanding and contracting, of moving or aging and growing better and more beautiful with time.

I think there can be no replacement for teaching people how to make things by showing them how to stick two pieces of wood together.

Wood is very warm and sensual and meant to be touched.

I like to say we can make anything in wood.

Beeswax is always preferable to chemical polishes because it does not destroy the natural surface of wood.

There's a real hunger to understand where objects come from, how artists show their understanding of materials. And there's something fascinating about watching people work, whether it's someone engraving a gun or sewing beautiful clothes together. I know that myself; I'll make a piece of furniture and feel the wood's grain talking to me.