Words Billie Brand
Film Edmund Cook
Photography Elliot Sheppard

Modern Pioneers is a collaborative series between The Modern House and Toast, which explores the work of four independent makers and designers across the country. Each captured in their studios, they’ll be wearing personally selected pieces from the lifestyle brand’s latest clothing collection. While their crafts may vary – from architecture to stone sculpting and furniture design – these individuals are connected by forward-thinking ideas, mindful processes and compelling visions. In this edition, we get two for one, when we visit the studio of husband-and-wife duo Wilkinson Rivera in Walthamstow.

The workplace of Grant Wilkinson and Teresa Rivera is buzzing. It’s a bright spring morning and the sound of sawing, drilling and chatter fills the air. But it’s not coming from the couple: it’s their contemporaries, a thriving community of wood and metal specialists, who also make within the shared not-for-profit Blackhorse Workshop. Grant, who grew up in Tunbridge Wells, and Teresa, a New York native, have recently moved operations from a shipping crate to a modest studio in one of Blackhorse’s corners, lined with numerous tools and bits of wavy wood. The latter is Wilkinson Rivera’s irreverent trademark: furniture – chairs, predominantly – from walnut, ash and oak that appear as if they’re rippling through water.

Teresa: “We have an obsession with chairs. They always felt like the obvious starting point for us. Chairs are notoriously difficult to make as they have such a specific function. To get them right is like solving a puzzle. That element of challenge is something we really enjoy.”

Grant: “After making chairs for a couple of years, it’s become really apparent how interactive they are. They’re so anthropomorphic because they absorb the body. Meanwhile, a shelving unit, for instance, is a passive object.”

Teresa: “We’re really keen to make things that we haven’t already seen. We’re looking to fill gaps – not necessarily in the market, but visual gaps. Our woodwork looks as if it shouldn’t be the shapes it is. We’re taking a very rigid material and turning it into something fluid. Our Windsor chair, which is probably our most recognisable design, seems as if you’re looking at it through water. It’s a warped design of a deeply traditional, static piece of furniture.

“I’ve always worked with my hands. I trained in painting and sculpture – first in Philadelphia and then at Camberwell when studying fine art alongside Grant, which is where we met. My painting was very figurative and a bit angsty at times. Because I’d painted for so long, by the time I graduated I needed to do something else. I don’t know if my mum has recovered yet. My mum is very into the fine arts. When I was growing up in New York, we would always be in and out of MoMA and she would always take me to public installations. It breaks her heart that I don’t paint anymore – but I needed my proper hiatus. I craved an element of function.”

Grant: “Her apartment in New York is full of these huge, lovely paintings Teresa did.

“After we graduated, the two of us went in different directions. I worked at Bellerby & Co, which makes very traditional hand-painted globes.”

Teresa: “I worked as an interior designer for Fran Hickman, which was a baptism of fire into the design world – and I caught the bug. But Grant and I were always toying with the idea of working together. Then during the pandemic when we had our son, Genie, we took the plunge.

“Each design begins as one of our own babies. Then, when it begins to grow, we start passing it back and forth. Because we live together, ideas develop in a really natural way, where we find ourselves talking about something over coffee early in the morning, for example. Genie can be a good distraction from work though. When we’re at home, we try to keep our focus on him.”

Grant: “There are hard things about running a business together, but very rarely do we take the challenges home – or we do our best not to. It’s lovely to live and work together, especially when we’re both excited about the same thing – we just want to talk about it all the time. I like that side of it.

“Teresa and I approach the creative process very differently. I like to ponder something for ages and let an idea sit at the back of my head. Then I go straight to making.”

Teresa: “I like to dive into the history of things. I use the Met’s online archive a lot, to look at primitive art. But we do share a routine. We tend to have a slow morning – we have a coffee, a chat and hang out for a bit at the studio once we’ve dropped Genie at nursery. Then we go through our schedule, orders and their progress. It’s fun because we never have the same day twice – whether we’re going to Wiltshire to mill some boards or popping into a gallery for a chat. If we’re in the workshop, though, our day is very machine based. We’re getting stuck in, dusty and dirty.”

Grant: “Every piece takes such a long time to make – it’s slow manufacturing. Generally, we know what we’ve got to crack on with the second we arrive in the studio, because it was the last thing we put down in the evening. There’s something quite reassuring in that routine.

“We like to work with wood that’s as local as possible. Our timber yard is right here at Blackhorse Workshop. Everything there is fallen not chopped, so it’s super sustainable. We also find ourselves driving to various mills around the country to find specific kinds of wood. Walnut, which we like to work with, is a very rare tree. One time, we called around 25 different mills across the country trying to find some and we couldn’t – until we spoke to one that was only about 20 minutes away!

“It’s really nice visiting mills because you can find out exactly where the wood came from. It isn’t just a plank of timber, it has a history to it. We’re now trying to build relationships with tree surgeons, so that we can claim more timber ourselves.

“Blackhorse has a very communal spirit. You see dozens of people every day. Some of them are doing similar things to us, some of them are more traditional woodworkers, but they all have so much experience that we rely on. These places are really rare in London. It’s a not-for-profit space, it’s run so that people can learn and get off the ground. There’s no way we could have gotten where we are without it. It’s pretty special.”