Hasta La Ideas

What do you do if you love old objects, but also love designing new things? With all of the ways you can get into furniture design, we’ve found Timothy Oulton’s career path—not to mention his designs—inspiring and unusual. The Manchester native was born to a father in the UK antiques business, which Tim joined at the age of 18. He spent five years selling restored antiques in the United States, then returned to the UK to expand his father’s business locally. So far, so normal.

It was after officially taking the family business over that Tim came to what must have been a difficult realization, and subsequently switched things up. Although he had successfully achieved sales of over one million pounds in the first year of their UK expansion alone, “Tim intelligently decided that there was no long-term future in the antiques business,” reads his bio, “and began instead to focus on reinventing antiques.”

The result was Oulton’s eponymous brand, which covers upholstered furniture, case goods, steamer trunks, lighting, and accessories, all inspired by the past and with the same emphasis on craftsmanship that was once pervasive among builders, but all with a modern twist. Thus we have what appear to be vintage steamer trunks that have been transformed into bookshelves, bureaus or desks updated with modern-day drawer slides:

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