What Lies Beneath: SpringsInside oursofas.
When you fall for a sofa, it usually starts with how it looks. The shape of an arm, the weight of a fabric, the way it seems to belong in a room before you've even sat down. But I've always believed that what you can't see matters just as much as what you can.
The suspension system hidden beneath the cushions is the quiet foundation of everything. It's what determines how a sofa truly feels to live with, not just the first afternoon, but ten or twenty years from now. It's what separates a beautiful sofa that lasts from one that slowly lets you down.
We're completely open about how ours are made. So let me take you inside.
The 8-way hand-tied coil
Our flagship US collections
How it’s made
Each individual carbon-steel coil is placed into the frame by hand, then tied with high-strength twine in eight directions: front, back, both sides, and all four diagonals. It’s a painstaking process that demands real skill and time, and the results are unlike anything a machine can replicate.
The benefit
Because each spring is independently tensioned and connected to its neighbours in every direction, the whole system moves dynamically with you. The tension is shared across the entire frame, preventing any internal shifting over decades of use and ensuring the sofa maintains its loft and shape for the long term.
The sit
Deeply buoyant, with a soft, generous, sink-in quality that still gives you structure and support beneath. It’s a technique passed down through generations of master upholsterers, and every sofa built this way is a hand-built original, with a warmth and character that’s genuinely hard to describe until you sit in one.
The fishmouth sprung system
Our wider collections
How it’s made
Inside the seat, rows of sinuous zigzag springs run from the back of the frame to the front. At the front edge, they meet a reinforced, pre-formed wire edge, shaped something like a fish’s mouth, which clips firmly to the frame. It’s a highly effective semi-mechanical system designed for consistency and longevity.
The benefit
The sinuous springs provide even suspension throughout, while the fishmouth edge does its most important work right at the front of the seat, exactly where most sofas begin to give way first, at the point where your legs rest over the cushion. It holds that edge firm, year after year.
The sit
Controlled, consistent and reassuringly solid. A slightly firmer feel than our coil systems, with a crispness that keeps its shape through daily life without any fuss.