Modern Rustic - Meet The Maker
Toby Inglis Hall didn’t really know what he was embarking on when he arrived at Rycotewood College in Oxfordshire in 1990. He’d had a handson outdoors childhood on his father’s vineyard near Lewes, East Sussex, but his French grandparents had an eye for furniture that trickled down through the family, so his parents enrolled him at the furniture college, thinking it would suit his practical abilities:
“I was only 16, and they had to explain the basics of cabinetmaking, but it just felt like an adventure.”
A diploma in furniture and design was followed by an HND in fine cabinetmaking – with jobs making repro furniture for local companies between the two courses, and then three years as a fitter for a kitchen maker. So he was already getting a rounded view of the business when he discovered the craft of timber framing, through his stepfather John Winterbottom: “John was one of the itinerant carpenters who headed for France in the 1970s to learn traditional skills lost in Britain, so when they came back they had the pick of the work.”
That merging of modern cabinetmaking and handcrafted timber framing is at the core of Inglis Hall – The Kitchen Maker, which now creates contemporary kitchens from Lewes. Toby started making his own kitchens from a small workshop at the vineyard, after days spent timber framing with another master craftsman, John Russell. He was still in his mid-20s and getting to understand the timber: “You’re working with green wood, so you have to realise the movement and shrinkage it will get.” He was also influenced by Johnny Grey (Elizabeth David’s nephew), whose books on kitchen design echoed Toby’s phobia of standard fitted units. When, in 2008, Johnny’s brother (who knew the family) asked Toby to create a replacement kitchen for one originally built by Johnny but destroyed by fire, it was a dream commission:
“I had this privileged experience of building a Johnny Grey kitchen for Johnny Grey’s brother.”
Another commission, the chance to project-manage a timber frame house – recruiting a workforce and building every part on site – gave Toby the final push to set up Inglis Hall in 2013 in a full-size workshop, and staffed by some of the house-project team. At first they took on any interesting joinery but when designer Tim Flux joined the business in 2017, they realised they needed to specialise. Narrowing the focus still further, Toby and Tim (now business partners) then decided to bring the rawness of timber framing to their kitchens, abandoning any pretence to Shaker style and creating an identity by pairing sawn wood with smooth, flat surfaces such as veneers, super-matt resins and Richlite compressed paper. The wood – usually French oak – has the knots and gnarls most joinery shops reject (Toby will buy a whole tree to make cabinet drawers, so the grain matches) and the kitchens are made to order, every element tailored to the needs of the household.
“We’re putting real craft into modern kitchens,” says Toby.
He loves the idea of customers opening a drawer and discovering bespoke, handcrafted details – space for an inherited Georgian cow creamer, a special slot for some awkwardly long skewers. His partner Elisa works in the food industry, so IH designs also use his experience of professional kitchens. When he and Elisa renovated their own house, they installed a kitchen made from “leftover Inglis Hall bits”, and included a prototype Joiner’s Island – the company’s workbench-inspired hybrid of island and kitchen table: “Less cabinet-heavy than an island, with space where a dog could sleep.” And perhaps a drawer for those skewers.
