Christian O’Reilly is a furniture design business which I set up at the beginning of 2006. I handle all aspects of the design and making process and my wife, Alice O’Reilly, handles the marketing, PR and administrative work.
I came to furniture design following a long career in other areas of design:
I started work in theatre as a set builder and prop maker, training at English National Opera under the guidance of Ivy Cannell. Here I learnt many skills, including developing an understanding of how the effect of light can be used, something which I constantly draw upon when designing furniture.
After several years freelancing for various London workshops and theatres, I became interested in CAD (Computer Aided Design) and was lucky enough to train with one of the top digital studios of its time.
This led to a wonderfully successful career modelling cars, aircraft interiors and various other products for companies such as Volvo, Jaguar, Samsung, British Airways and Nissan to name a few. I got to work with numerous designers at the top of their game and never stopped learning new tricks and ways of resolving complex design problems.
I then decided that I wanted to do the designing myself and to that end spent time training as a cabinet maker with David Savage in
My work mixes classic proportion and contemporary detail to create clean, modern pieces, which sit well in any surrounding. I spend a lot of time resolving the design, stripping away unnecessary details to allow the wood to ‘do the talking’.