Take a Schplendid sofa apart and you find a curious collection of things that grew on trees, in fields or on animals. The reason for all this lovely naturalness may not quite be the one you think…
An odd thing about seeing Schplendid sofas in the middle of fields or woods is how they don’t actually look all that odd. Despite obviously being destined for sitting rooms, they do actually look quite at home in the great outdoors. (And yes, we really did cart a sofa out there for the photos, it’s not AI.)
Having considered and debated it at some length, we think it’s because in a way we’re putting them back where they came from.
Inside a Schplendid sofa you'll find a solid beech frame and ingredients like wool, coconut fibre, natural latex, linen, ethically-sourced down and now mohair. So everything comes direct from nature: trees, sheep, coconuts, rubber trees, flax fields, geese and goats.
But an interesting thing is that the natural history of our sofas is quite counterintuitive. Allow us to explain…
How did all that natural stuff get in there?
The truth is that Rohan never sat down and decided to invent a natural sofa per se. Rather, his mission was to make the best possible sofa, avoiding all the pitfalls and shortcuts the modern sofa industry has lazily fallen into, and making it affordable for as many people as possible.
So his approach throughout was to ask about every element of the sofa: what is the absolute best material for this particular job?
For the frame, he wanted something immensely strong and durable, and that was beech. For the upholstery, he wanted materials with resilience, spring and breathability... and that’s coconut fibre, latex and wool.
For cushioning, he wanted supreme, comfort, and goose down is indisputably the softest, comfiest substance on earth.
For the cloth, he wanted beautiful fibres that feel wonderful, wear well and get better with age, which means exceptional linen, velvet and mohair.
So for every question Rohan asked, nature kept giving the best answer.
(By contrast, plastic foam is never the answer, except to the question: “what’s the cheapest option for the manufacturer?”)
There's nothing new under the cushions…
It’s worth mentioning that, even though we’ve taken a radical approach to sofas, we haven’t really invented anything. We’re just doing things as they used to be done.
Before the sofa industry discovered the joys of petrochemical foam, polyester fibre and ever-cheaper spring systems, good upholstered furniture was made from timber, metal springs, wool, hair, feathers and other natural materials. A solid beech frame and hand-tied coil springs would once have been signs that somebody was simply making a sofa properly. Today, fewer than 1% of sofas use eight-way hand-tied springs, according to Rohan’s estimate; the cheaper zig-zag variety can be fitted in minutes.
So in one sense, Schplendid is doing something very un-modern: going back to materials and methods that have been proving themselves for generations, that are the very best you can use.
The naturalness is a happy consequence of choosing extremely good stuff.
The truly radical bit is in our pricing model. How on earth do you make a sofa like that without charging eye-watering prices? Our answer is to spend extravagantly on the sofa and be spectacularly mean about most other things: no expensive showrooms, no permanent sales, and above all no huge mark-ups on better fabrics.
Which brings us back to those photographs…
A Schplendid sofa may ultimately belong in a sitting room but underneath the linen and velvet is a little natural history of woods, fields, flocks and faraway trees. Hardly surprising it looks so at home, really.
P.S. There may be another reason our sofas look so at home outdoors. We design them from the inside out, around the organic of human bodies sitting, sprawling and curling up. So perhaps the shapes have a natural logic to them too. We wrote more about that here: Designing from the Heart of the Sofa.
The Natural History of the Sofa
Take a Schplendid sofa apart and you find a curious collection of things that grew on trees, in fields or on animals. The reason for all this lovely naturalness may not quite be the one you think…
An odd thing about seeing Schplendid sofas in the middle of fields or woods is how they don’t actually look all that odd. Despite obviously being destined for sitting rooms, they do actually look quite at home in the great outdoors. (And yes, we really did cart a sofa out there for the photos, it’s not AI.)
Having considered and debated it at some length, we think it’s because in a way we’re putting them back where they came from.
Inside a Schplendid sofa you'll find a solid beech frame and ingredients like wool, coconut fibre, natural latex, linen, ethically-sourced down and now mohair. So everything comes direct from nature: trees, sheep, coconuts, rubber trees, flax fields, geese and goats.
But an interesting thing is that the natural history of our sofas is quite counterintuitive. Allow us to explain…
How did all that natural stuff get in there?
The truth is that Rohan never sat down and decided to invent a natural sofa per se. Rather, his mission was to make the best possible sofa, avoiding all the pitfalls and shortcuts the modern sofa industry has lazily fallen into, and making it affordable for as many people as possible.
So his approach throughout was to ask about every element of the sofa: what is the absolute best material for this particular job?
For the frame, he wanted something immensely strong and durable, and that was beech. For the upholstery, he wanted materials with resilience, spring and breathability... and that’s coconut fibre, latex and wool.
For cushioning, he wanted supreme, comfort, and goose down is indisputably the softest, comfiest substance on earth.
For the cloth, he wanted beautiful fibres that feel wonderful, wear well and get better with age, which means exceptional linen, velvet and mohair.
So for every question Rohan asked, nature kept giving the best answer.
(By contrast, plastic foam is never the answer, except to the question: “what’s the cheapest option for the manufacturer?”)
There's nothing new under the cushions…
It’s worth mentioning that, even though we’ve taken a radical approach to sofas, we haven’t really invented anything. We’re just doing things as they used to be done.
Before the sofa industry discovered the joys of petrochemical foam, polyester fibre and ever-cheaper spring systems, good upholstered furniture was made from timber, metal springs, wool, hair, feathers and other natural materials. A solid beech frame and hand-tied coil springs would once have been signs that somebody was simply making a sofa properly. Today, fewer than 1% of sofas use eight-way hand-tied springs, according to Rohan’s estimate; the cheaper zig-zag variety can be fitted in minutes.
So in one sense, Schplendid is doing something very un-modern: going back to materials and methods that have been proving themselves for generations, that are the very best you can use.
The naturalness is a happy consequence of choosing extremely good stuff.
The truly radical bit is in our pricing model. How on earth do you make a sofa like that without charging eye-watering prices? Our answer is to spend extravagantly on the sofa and be spectacularly mean about most other things: no expensive showrooms, no permanent sales, and above all no huge mark-ups on better fabrics.
Which brings us back to those photographs…
A Schplendid sofa may ultimately belong in a sitting room but underneath the linen and velvet is a little natural history of woods, fields, flocks and faraway trees. Hardly surprising it looks so at home, really.
P.S. There may be another reason our sofas look so at home outdoors. We design them from the inside out, around the organic of human bodies sitting, sprawling and curling up. So perhaps the shapes have a natural logic to them too. We wrote more about that here: Designing from the Heart of the Sofa.