Contemporary Art, Furniture & Craft Gallery · Licensed Café
PETTER SOUTHALL has been making his distinctive furniture, and more recently architectural and sculptural pieces, in Dorset since 1989. He combines traditional Norwegian wooden boatbuilding with highly skilled cabinetmaking techniques to create work that looks simple and entirely original. A group of his exceptional pieces is on permanent display at Sladers Yard. To this he adds works which he makes to explore new ideas. These pieces are for sale in the gallery. A recent workshop move to Denhay northwest of Bridport has opened a new chapter in his career and new thoughts about bringing wood into people’s lives in interesting, ethical and life-enhancing works.
Talk to us about ideas and commissions. We can put you in touch with Petter and draw on his previous designs and ideas. He works mainly to order, designing new pieces or making already existent designs to meet your needs and desires perfectly. He also keeps Sladers Yard stocked with one-off and small batch pieces which can be bought direct from here and shipped to you, wherever you are.
Please contact the gallery on gallery@sladersyard.co.uk or telephone 01308 459511 with any enquiries. Pieces that are available to buy now are priced or marked £POA (price on application).
Please click on the links below to see the work that is in the gallery now.
For more information about Petter please scroll down this page or visit his website:
pettersouthall.com
Petter’s designs have a distinctive Scandinavian confidence. He works in unique beautiful pieces of oak, ash, elm and other Northern European hardwoods, often using wood sourced from the area local to his customers. He specialises in steam bending thick solid boards into the arches, twists, curves and rings that are so striking in his designs. His work is built to last, using immaculate craftsmanship and attention to detail. His through-joinery creates the decorative effect in most of his designs.
Petter is conscious of the health-giving qualities of natural materials and works hard to avoid emissions by using as little glue as possible and working mostly in solid timber or where necessary cutting his own veneers. His polishes are natural oils and waxes but he also offers a tactile washed finish which is a very smooth surface with nothing between you and the wood. This can be kept clean by washing with soap and water and over time builds up a beautiful natural patina. Petter’s furniture is made to last and to be passed on through generations, bringing pleasure every day to the home, workplace or public space.
‘Unadorned simplicity, coupled with extreme attention to detail and quality of workmanship’
MARY MYERS COUNTRY LIFE
Petter has made furniture for important collections around the world. Commissions include the directors’ dining room at the National Gallery, the boardroom for Barbican Art Gallery, reception and boardroom furniture for many different companies and corporations mainly in London & locally for Bridport Town Hall, LSI and Lyme Regis Philpot Museum. He has designed and made public art seating for Cambridge Science Park, the Wessex Ridgeway Sculpture Trail, Sanctuaries for Newton Abbott and Minehead Hospitals & the Macmillan Garden at Hereford Hospital. In 2019 his Wave Pavilion was commissioned for the RHS Chelsea Flower Show. Private commissions have been numerous, wonderful and varied, sometimes including making work from trees grown on clients’ own land.
Petter has been working wood since he was 17 when he returned to Norway to study traditional boatbuilding first as an apprentice, then at the Jondal wooden boat building school. Later he was one of eight young boatbuilders selected for a heritage apprenticeship learning direct from the last remaining members of the traditional family all the skills to build the highly prized Oselvar Faering, an open sailing rowboat known as the Stradivarius of the sea. For seven years Petter built boats, running his own boatyard in Norway and later building yachts in Maine. He still sails his first Oselvar from West Bay harbour.
‘Southall’s furniture is never over-elaborate or ornate. It is simple and often massive but its perfect proportions gift it an elegance and delicacy that is rare in such strongly made pieces.’
FIONA ROBINSON EVOLVER
Petter studied cabinetmaking at the College of the Redwoods in California with James Krenov, whose deeply thoughtful approach contributed to Petter’s direct and honest language in wood. In 1989 Petter came to UK to study sustainable design at John Makepeace’s forward-looking Hooke Park College. Already an outstanding woodworker, Petter benefitted from a high level of publicity and lecturers from all parts of business and design. He graduated with commissions, including a dining room for the sculptor Dame Elisabeth Frink, and set up his i tre workshop at Chilcombe in West Dorset, on the estate of the artist John Hubbard, where he worked for thirty years making his furniture with a team of craftsmen and apprentices.
In 2024 he moved to a new workshop at Lower Denhay Farm, where he is now fully installed and making wonderful new designs.
‘Deceptively simple yet utterly sophisticated… The objects of my desire are made by the furniture designer Petter Southall.’
CAROLINE PALMER, FINANCIAL TIMES, HTSI
