AGENCIES: David Trubridge
www.davidtrubridge.com
David Trubridge graduated from Newcastle University in Northern England in 1972 with a degree in Naval Architecture (boat design).
For the next ten years he lived and worked in rural Northumberland. He taught himself furniture making while working part-time as a forester on a private estate. He went on to develop his own designs which were exhibited around Britain. Many commissions followed, most notably from the Victoria and Albert Museum, St Mary’s Cathedral Edinburgh and the Shipley Gallery Newcastle.
During this time he married Linda, a Fine Arts graduate, and they had two sons, Sam and Billy. In 1981 they sold everything they had, bought the yacht ‘Hornpipe’ and set out on an open ended adventure around the world. For five years they sailed through the Caribbean and Pacific, stopping to work for a while in the Virgin Islands and Tahiti. David made whole house lots of furniture for expatriates on Tortola and Moorea.
They arrived in New Zealand in late 1985 basing themselves in the Bay of Islands from where they continued to sail on ‘Hornpipe’. David started to make furniture influenced by their Pacific travels. A series of chairs were made like outrigger canoes : light flexible structures fastened with string lashings held graceful canoe forms as seats. Canoe Chair is in the entrance foyer of the New Zealand embassy in Tokyo.