North London Beds and more By Alison Carmichael
"I started working as a carpenter when I was 30 and then had a market stall In Covent Garden. It taught me a lot - I was making things cheaply and trying to sell them cheap and couldn't. So I made them good quality, which cost me more, and still offered them cheap. It was then I started outselling all my fellow stallholders! Simple really, and it still works and keeps people coming back and recommending us to their friends." In the heart of London's historic furniture making district is Julian Litvinoff's stylish and spacious showroom displaying the beds that made his company, Litvinoff and Fawcett, famous for good quality at genuinely affordable prices. Julian's showroom, in the Hackney Road, is yards from his workshop and warehouse, where every bed is made to order, and where his company also custom makes mattresses. "I joined up with Mel Fawcett in 1979 who had a workshop and we decided to make beds. I put an advertisement in Time Out, using a picture of an elephant I found, since I had no graphic designer. The advert said ~Jumbo Beds £59' and the phone didn't stop ringing." A Litvinoff and Fawcett bed comes in many styles, from the very basic plaform bed, to children's beds and bunk beds, day beds, stacking beds, four poster beds, a bateau-lit and a wonderful medieval style bed, appropriately named 'Abbot'. All can be individually specified, the frame lengthened or shortened, or provided with drawers. Pine Beds, made from Baltic Pine from sustainable sources are finished with coloured stains or clear varnish to order. Some of the beds are available in solid oak maple, or cherry wood. All the beds take minutes to assemble, unlike much self assembly furniture. In component form they easily fit into lifts or into flats with difficult access. Unusually for self-assembly furniture, the beds are handmade and built to last, with unique double bolted side rails that do not work loose over time. Most people will have come across beds with screw fixed mortice and tenon joints or fancy gadgets, which fail, or constantly work free. Simplicity of design and structure is Julian's motto; hard to achieve but certainly worth it from the customer's point of view. Litvinoff and Fawcett 238 Hackney Road E2 Tel: 7739 3480 (open Sundays 10.30-2.30)