I went on a tour last Wednesday that scratched a fantastical itch in me. At a two-storey warehouse, tucked away in an unsuspecting soi in Bang Sue is City Arts Limited – a site where the most intricate, elegant, and stunning furniture designs in Bangkok are conceived and realized. With over 100 staff and 20 years in the game, the team here produces objects that celebrate rare, craft traditions. From shagreen (stingray skin) to straw marquetry; lacquer and cast bronze; each vase, cabinet, and table is tailor made to perfection. And the best part? To guide us through the factory was Willy Wonka himself – Mr. Alexander Lamont.

After visiting the showroom next to Warehouse 30, I was already taken aback by the brand’s bold vision and their one-of-a-kind collections. At the factory, I was able to get an inside peek at the ideation and creation processes that go into these products. Needless to say, my one woodworking class and a lifetime of shopping at Ikea did not prepare me for the depth, complexity, and artistry present at Alexander Lamont.

From the very first steps I took on the factory floor, Mr Lamont established a clear dedication to sourcing quality materials. Unimpressed by the plywood available in Thailand, he started importing individual plywood sheets from Scandinavia and assembling them in house. In the first room we entered, there were workers making lightbulb sockets out of bronze and crafting wooden tiles embossed with the Alexander Lamont logo. To our left was the pressure and temperature testing room. Since most of their buyers are international, every order they deliver needs to pass through various different shipping channels, facing extreme heat and cold. By testing the integrity of the product before shipping, they can ensure it will survive the journey.

After admiring the different blades and saws in the woodworking room, we went to the straw room. This was the busiest room with over 40 artisans working at the same time in rows, carefully cutting and stripping the straw like clockwork. In fact, even the straw has an origin story. It is grown by a farmer in France who cuts it at the exact right time to be viable for straw marquetry. If the farmer were to wait for the wheat to be harvestable, the straw would no longer have the desirable qualities necessary for this work. Behind the room is a dyeing station with hundreds of different colors so the straw can be customized for any project. Once again, the dedication to quality was astounding.

This form of intricate work requires delicate hands and a keen eye. Many of the artisans were working on a sunburst pattern which required all the strips of straw to converge into a single point. Often, this pattern is chosen by clients for large wall panels, meaning a millimeter difference could throw the whole piece out of balance. From an outside perspective, it looked challenging, but also meditative. It is a practice I could see myself trying someday.

As we made our way through the rest of the factory, the artistry and talent in each room became abundantly clear. Workers carefully glued pieces of eggshell to lamps, in a process that takes up to two full weeks to cover the vase. The product design reminds me of the Japanese art of Kintsugi. Meanwhile, just a few doors down, were more artisans working with shagreen or sting ray skin. In Indonesia, sting rays are sold at the fish markets for their meat, with their skin often getting thrown away unused. I was absolutely dumbfounded to see how they were turning the skin into beautifully textured coatings for various furniture items. I saw a gentleman smoothing out a piece of red shagreen over a wooden box, carefully wrapping it around on each side. Even with several rounds of sanding, shagreen furniture has a uniquely porous and bumpy feel to it that is wonderful to the touch.

Following this, we walked up to the second floor where the R&D department, gold layering room, and Mr. Lamont’s personal office are located. The R&D room, as he admits, is a place where there is certainly more invested than made back. But the beauty is the ability of the team here to create and play freely without any boundaries. It’s this sort of freedom that allows them to set new bars for what is possible, eventually trickling down into the creativity seen in their yearly catalogues. 

Meanwhile, in the gold layering room, a small team of staffers layer individual strips of Thai gold on vases, creating an immense and rich yellow shine on each piece. As we made our way down the hall, we finally ended up in Mr. Lamont’s office. It was a creative’s dream habitat. The walls were covered in artwork and sketches for new projects, as well as photos from his travels. Along the shelves were hundreds of wooden trinkets and sculptures collected from all over Asia, South America, and the rest of the world. Dividing the room in two was a massive wooden archway, a beautiful touch of feng shui. It was clear from seeing this room that he wasn’t just dedicated to his craft – he lived and breathed it.

After a look inside the factory, I doubt I will ever see furniture the way I did once. It has completely reshaped my expectation of what the things around you can look like, should look like, and what you can expect from them. It is not enough for a table to be able to hold your objects. It is not enough for a cabinet to be able to store things. I’ve begun to ask new important questions like: how does this make me feel when I look at it? How can I bring something into my living room that evokes a particular emotion? I am certain I will be thinking about these questions and what I have learned here for many weeks to come. It is astounding to see what a team of people with a clear vision can accomplish. And it is finally clear to me now why Alexander Lamont is the gold standard for luxury furniture made in Thailand – it’s because it doesn’t get better than this.

Following the tour, I had the chance to speak with Alexander Lamont about the history of the company and how he got into the furniture business. Here is what he had to say:

Q：So you started in Bangkok?

Mr. Lamont：I actually started in Chiang Mai. I was there until my wife moved — she got a job in Bangkok — and we thought, Bangkok is right. So for the first ten years, pretty much, we were based here.

There’s a lot of detail about the beginning — how I found the first customer, what I was doing, why we set up the business — but the simplification, the summary, is that the first customer asked me to do the thing I most wanted to do. In a way, it created the path. It completely supported the idea.

That’s the hardest thing in the beginning with business — who are you going to sell to? That tends to pull you in undirected directions.

So the first customer was an American furniture company. They came to me looking for someone to design a collection of accessories in various materials, organize production, and sell to them exclusively in the US.

That’s hard to find now — somebody who can design, control production, ensure high quality, and give exclusivity. Most people fall in love with their product and want to sell it everywhere — America being the biggest money.

But for me, starting out, they said: “We want big stuff. We’ve got vast showrooms. If you give us little bowls, we know we’ll sell them — but we want scale.”

So we did:

• Bowls 50 cm wide, 30 cm wide

• Candlesticks 2 feet high

• Stone, hammered silver, palmwood, bronze

• Ceramics — celadon, crackle glaze, splash glazes

I worked on that for about four months with no guarantee of orders. We shipped samples to San Francisco, met the buyer — and she said, “We’re having everything.”

Minimums like 50 pieces, 150 pieces — fantastic opening orders.

But I wasn’t the producer. So I went back to the workshops with the orders, and some refused — after I’d done prototypes and pricing.

One ceramic workshop said: “To get the glaze you proposed, we get one perfect piece out of ten. For 100, we’d need to make 1,000. We don’t want that waste.”

So there were frustrations. But the ones that worked, worked. And that became the propulsion — strong, handcrafted pieces.

Over 25 years, that original company almost went bust. Huge market changes followed.

Retail customers — department stores with experienced buyers — almost all closed after the financial collapse. Their middle-class customer base disappeared.

Even for a small business like ours, the gymnastics were huge:

• In 2012, seven shops in Thailand were half our business

• Today, that’s about 2%

• Everything is export now

• Customers are mainly designers

  
  

We build collections thinking at a very creative level — because designers are still buying these pieces — while retail shops everywhere are shutting.

Q：Where did you learn design?

Mr. Lamont：Growing up in a family business in England called Global Village Crafts.

We imported handicrafts — first from East Africa and India — and over 20 years, from about 50 countries across South America, Asia, and Africa. Those were the interesting sourcing regions then.

You’d go to Peru, Mexico, Nigeria — and find worlds of traditional craft. We’d import it.

I worked every weekend and holiday unpacking wooden crates wrapped in newspaper — carvings from Nigeria, papier-mâché from Mexico.

Handling everything constantly, I developed an instinct:

• This is good

• This is beautiful

• This feels powerful

• I feel the place through the piece

That energy of handwork and materials was my biggest education. It made me particular about using natural materials, learning skills, and making pieces feel authentic — “This is who we are”.

If I’d gone to design school, I don’t think we’d have run this company.

Schools teach processes — how to think, approach clients, follow trends. I didn’t have those rules. I was running around trying things — and we still are.

There’s no guidebook. No trend we’re following. We’re trying to surprise sophisticated clients.

Interior designers spend all their time looking for something new. So to show in Paris and have them say, “This is unique” — that’s the challenge. That’s what drives us.

And then you need people in the workshops who get it. Drawing is one thing — executing is another.

Getting shagreen perfectly aligned with bronze — when bronze comes out differently each time — is too much of a headache for most people. But for us, that’s bread and butter.

There’s no shortcut. Just time and acceptance of complexity.

Q：How involved are you in designing each product?

Mr. Lamont：In the last collection, about 60% was my design, 40% someone else’s. Next year, nearly everything will be mine — but collections are small, around 20 pieces.

About 50% of the design process happens after the sketch:

1. The sketch is the dream

2. The technical drawing makes it possible

3. Prototyping delivers reality

You discover problems along the way.

Take the piece she’s (technical artist) drawing — each leg weighs 15 kilos. So you need an internal structure strong enough to support it, plus make it usable for delivery and daily life.

You can design anything — but it has to function.

The downside of being in the workshop daily is hearing every headache. It can dampen excitement and push you toward safe designs.

That’s why outside designers are good — they don’t care about your headaches. They bring bold ideas.

Then I become the intermediary — adjusting aesthetics, scale, thickness, tactility.

How a door feels when you open it communicates quality instantly. So the interaction between us and external designers improves the final piece.

Q：Would you say your biggest design philosophy is making something people want to touch?

Mr. Lamont：Maybe, yes.

If you don’t want to touch it, there’s a problem.

A piece should draw you in. People often don’t even know what material they’re looking at. If they see stingray for the first time, they have no clue — but they’re intrigued.

We use a busy palette of materials, but we try to extract the heat — keep the character without screaming.

Take the tree cabinet in the shop:

• Bronze tree trunks rising upward

• Bronze branches extending out

• Lines continuing into straw marquetry

• Leaves in straw marquetry

• Leaves repeated in wood marquetry on top

There’s a lot happening — but it doesn’t feel overdone.

We deliberately paired it back. A copy company had done a very naturalistic tree cabinet. I told the Colombian designer:

“I want your tree idea — but as far away from theirs as possible.”

So we stylized the branches instead of making them gnarly and literal. The leaves kept the essence.

That piece was nominated for an award in Paris. We didn’t win — none of the nominees on our bench did — but it was still lovely. First time we’d been shortlisted.

Sometimes awards can feel like a scam — you pay to enter and their friends win. The winner was an uncomfortable chair from Peru.

Modern award design often lacks craft — it’s conceptual. Nothing wrong with that, but I like furniture to function.

A chair that looks like a sculpture is a sculpture — it shouldn’t be furniture.

A chair should look like a chair and be comfortable. That’s my opinion.

But still — being nominated for that cabinet was nice.

By Ayush Madan

Photo : Alexander Lamont