Developing our Burford Sofas

Over the past few years, we at Burford Garden Co. have been developing several ‘Burford Designed’ collaborations with esteemed makers using our insight from 50 years of retail experience. Always with quality in the forefront, we seek to create inspiring, and fundamentally practical pieces to enhance everyday life. Our newest addition to our collections, the Burford Sofas, are a case in point.

From our years of experience selling sofas in our Indoor Furniture department, we decided that we wanted to provide solutions that precisely answer our customers' needs, whilst giving them versatility and choice. For this venture we approached an established company with a history in building beautiful and robust sofas, and formed a creative collaboration. As a result we can offer our customers the choice of five different shapes, each in six sizes, and upholstered in a wide variety of fabrics. There is also scope to choose fillings that suit you, and even a selection of feet. As a result of these choices, we aim to ensure that these sofas can match each original vision.

Entirely handmade in a large workshop based in East Sussex, the craftsmanship behind each bespoke piece of furniture reflects our and the makers’ ethos: to build beautiful pieces from natural materials that make a positive, comforting impact on the home.

We have chosen fabric from renowned design companies Linwood, Romo and Warwick. All three are established, family-run firms who draw inspiration from a vast knowledge of classical taste and designs from historical textile archives, whilst also being at the forefront of the latest trends in interior design. The intention is to create furniture that will continue to be relevant for many years, aesthetically as robust and enduring as the structures of the sofas themselves.

Continuing this high standard of design, our Burford sofas are painstakingly constructed by a group of highly skilled makers and upholsterers, whose combined efforts produce enduring pieces of statement furniture. The quality of the workmanship and materials is reflected in the sofa’s sturdy structures, sumptuously soft textures, and striking upholstery.

Built from a mixture of engineered, furniture-grade plywood and the dense, hardwood of birch to guarantee maximum durability, the structure is pieced together using a combination of glue, screws, dowels, and staples. Once the foundation is in place, it is well padded with hessian fabric.

The final flourish, the legs are moulded to complement the style of the sofa, and come in five colours: natural, black, walnut, mid-brown, and dark brown.

Operating as the seat’s tendons and ligaments, serpentine springs are stretched across the wooden skeleton of the sofa, absorbing structural stress and preventing the cushions from flattening. These springs are made from heavy-gauge steel wires bent into a continuous line of vertical S-shaped coils. Horizontal metal tie rods reinforce the coils, inhibiting shifting and sagging, and are secured to the frame using padded clips and fasteners. These springs, which determine the depth of the sofa’s comfort, are encased in a sustainable foam.

The seat and back cushions contain a range of European duck feathers and / or quallofil fibres. Quallofil, a sustainable alternative to foam, comprises 50% recycled plastic, and is engineered to a robust standard in order to retain a delightfully plump shape. With this supportive and malleable filling in place, the cushions require little attention, achieving an appealing consistency.

We are proud to introduce these new sofas which, because of the process of design, we know to be of the upmost quality. Creating impeccably designed pieces of furniture, echoes Burford’s philosophy to construct out-of-the-ordinary products that are original and, importantly, practical.