Bruce Andrews standing beside the Bantry Bay chair in the Azure Collection, which reflects Magnifissance magazine’s point of view, luxury refined through heritage.
I had the distinct pleasure recently of being interviewed for an article that appears in the current edition of Magnifissance Magazine, which is devoted to British culture. The issue is subtitled “Honoring a Noble Heritage” and I am thrilled to be featured since this is what we are all about here at Bruce Andrews Design. In fact, the publication’s tagline, Luxury Refined Through Heritage, couldn’t be closer to our own philosophical bent!
Magnifissance Features Bruce Andrews
The cover of Magnifissance magazine’s British Edition.
The article speaks to the fact that we are taking a unique approach to furniture manufacturing, our focus on bespoke and luxury setting us apart from many other companies producing products for the home today. “That ambitious self-reliance, that autonomous creativity, lives within the walls of Bruce Andrews Design because it’s the soul (and standard) of the master artisans who work there,” the article’s author, Lindsay Wallace, notes. We do take this subject so seriously when designing and manufacturing our furniture so it’s splendid to be recognized for our determination.
The piece also describes our point of view as staying true to a couture or atelier luxury model: “Anything which will stay within your family forever, it must speak about you—it breathes you.” That’s so apropos to our mission here and I thank the editors of Magnifissance for realizing the fact that we are creating tomorrow’s heirlooms is an effort worth publicizing. They also gave me the opportunity to identify some of my favorite treasures past and present, which they featured in the article.
Magnifissance magazine quizzed Bruce Andrews about some of my favorite things for their “Tastemaker” profile.
Luxury Refined Through Heritage
Over the past several months—since we launched the Azure Collection during High Point Market—I’ve been fortunate to have a number of conversations with Olivier Chartrand, the director of audience and business development for Magnifissance. I have enjoyed our shared determination to breathe new life into the subject of luxury; and I have been excited to watch how the team at Magnifissance is developing their platform because I believe it is time for a tasteful magazine with a global initiative to unflinchingly focus on what it means to live well.
They’ve captured the concept beautifully, and as I flipped through the pages I realized I was in such great company: a number of stories about the British royal family appear in the issue—Queen Elizabeth II’s milliner, her former crown jeweler, and a portrait artist who had captured her quite powerfully share their experiences with HRH. Another piece finds the magazine’s team on an excursion to a family-run shop in London to survey the timepieces being sold, all valuable antiques. And they present a behind-the-scenes look at the lives of Lord and Lady Carnarvon, the owners of Highclere Castle where Downton Abbey was filmed.
Henrietta Spencer-Churchill designed this home near Inverness, Scotland.
Design Takes on the Spirit of Place
The feature “Classic Elegance on the Highlands” showcases a lovely home designed by Henrietta Spencer-Churchill, the founder of Spencer-Churchill Designs, for clients who asked her to create a residence that would offer them sweeping views of the dramatic Scottish coastline near Inverness, the cultural capital of the Scottish Highlands. As you know if you’ve read our Journal before, this is a part of the world that is very near and dear to our hearts at Bruce Andrews Design. There’s a terrific piece about her in 1stdibs’ Introspective Magazine.
Chatsworth House, one of Great Britain’s grand country estates.
In the “Polished Perspectives” section, Andrew Ogletree, who once served as the head of English furniture at Sotheby’s in New York, speaks about how furniture can tell a great story if you know how to listen—a “take” on antiques that I think is quite marvelous. John Julius, the 2nd Viscount of Norwich, is also in this section. The author has just released his 20th historical novel and he admits having access to some of Great Britain’s notable estates serves as visual stimulation for his stories. Chatsworth House, the seat of the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire, is notable for writerly inspiration.
Knole House in Kent. Image courtesy Wikimedia and Diliff.
Ogletree—the head of sales and assistant vice president at Mallett, deemed London’s last “antiques department store”—cites Knole House in Kent as his favorite great English country home as “not to miss” if you’re touring grand European estates. “Talk about the quintessential English country home,” he explains; “it’s been referred to as a calendar house because it has 365 rooms, one room for every day of the year.”
You can bet we’ll be watching this publication flourish as they curate and present a form of luxury that is infused with global cultural influences. Have you subscribed? We have!
This post, Luxury Refined Through Heritage, © Bruce Andrews Design, all rights reserved. Our furniture is now available through Nandina Home in Aiken, SC; Jalan Jalan in Miami, FL; Travis & Company in ADAC in Atlanta; and the Ellouise Abbott showroom in Dallas, TX. We will soon be showing in the Ellouise Abbott showroom in Houston and in the Michael-Cleary showroom in Chicago, IL.
