OUR CONSTRUCTION

All of our sofas are lovingly made by hand in Derbyshire from natural materials.The foundation of any good sofa begins with the frame, our frames are made from sustainably sourced Birch hardwood which comes from forests in Finland.

The Birch is prepared in our frame making workshop and each joint is put together with wooden dowels, screws and glue. The resulting finished frame is extremely strong and forms a very solid basis from which to commence the upholstery process.

We make our sofas in a very traditional way. Sofas made 100 years ago or so were made with steel springs in the base. Ours follow this tradition and each sofa has a fully sprung base made with specially produced sprung steel. The combination of these springs is the equivalent of having a high quality mattress in the bottom of your sofa and significantly adds to both the comfort and the overall durability and longevity of use.

Once the spring unit has been assembled into the frame, the upholstery process begins. We start by covering the springs with a layer of natural jute. On top of the jute we then place a 25 mm thick layer of rubberised natural fibres. On top of these fibres, we then place a felted cotton wadding layer which in turn is covered by a wool based interliner for fire retardancy. This is then finished with a cotton lining which forms the final layer for your sofa and can be seen when you take off your fabric covers for cleaning.

The traditional nature of the materials that are used in Sophie Conran sofas is such that if you were to open up a sofa that was made around 100 years ago and compare the materials, you would find them to be almost identical in every way.

Our cushions are hand made in Derbyshire with European Duck feathers to provide you with a truly wonderful level of comfort. As with all brand new feather cushions, when they first arrive at your home, they will feel quite firm in comparison to how they will soon become within the first few weeks of use. This change in how they feel is aided by regularly plumping them so that air is able to circulate in between the feathers. It is the combination of air in between feathers that makes a feather based cushion comfortable. You will find that if you take care of your cushions with regular plumping to ensure that there is a good amount of air within them, that they will provide you with an extremely comfortable sofa for many years.