Melanie Porter studied Fashion Design at Central Saint Martins and turned her talent for knitting to one-off statement pieces in giant Aran, cable, stripes and Union Flags, which are upholstered onto found vintage furniture, taking in everything from sixties era rotating plastic easy chairs to metal cinema seats and stately Victorian pieces. She also has several ranges of attractive home accessories.
For Decorex Melanie is launching a new chair range, still upholstered in her distinctive chunky and individually made hand-knits, but presented on new frames. Melanie says, “Exactly 10 years ago I made my first piece of bespoke, hand-knitted furniture. Since then I have made over 100 unique pieces for clients, sourcing frames or restoring their own pieces. For 2017, I have developed a novel collaboration with British manufacturers of high-quality furniture, Wychwood. This provides the opportunity for repeatable frames which can be commissioned by clients to suit the colour scheme of any room, in both classic and contemporary and a wide range of colours and textures.
“Importantly, this collaborative process retains the individualised approach I follow with my bespoke pieces – my clients are able to select colours and textures to suit their own preferred palette. My current colour offering is >200 colours and the styles will be a range of stripes and single-coloured highly-textured pieces. These new styles really open the process to the client to see how they can be involved in the design, look and feel of their furniture.”
Melanie’s chairs and lamps were featured in the Campaign for Wool’s Woolly BnB in autumn 2016.
Melanie Porter was a member of the Design-Nation portfolio between 2014 and 2019.