Family affair
Rebecca Snelling, designer and one-half of furniture brand Douglas + Bec, the business she started with her father Douglas Snelling.
Douglas Snelling, Rebecca Snelling and her partner Paul Dowie.
The kitchen in the 1970s’ bungalow.
An Angle lamp designed by Snelling sits in a corner of the living room.
The master bedroom is home to one of Snelling’s lamps and a vase by New Zealand designer Phil Cuttance.
Carlos the dog relaxes in Rebecca Snelling’s Auckland home.
In the kitchen, a Doug Johnston tray acts as a fruit bowl.
A collection of ephemera on the dining table.
The mahogany sideboard was inherited.
Pencil drawings by Snelling adorn the bedroom wall.
Six years ago Rebecca Snelling, 31, and her dad, Douglas Snelling, 68, started a small furniture business in a garage in Clevedon. Today the company has grown into a furniture and homewares brand that is known for its high-end materials and handcrafted elements, and sells overseas and in stores in Auckland, Wellington and Dunedin. Last year, Douglas + Bec created a collection for fashion designer Kate Sylvester and moved into a new, purpose-built workshop. Earlier this year, their second store opened in Mt Eden, Auckland.
URBIS: How did Douglas + Bec start?
Rebecca Snelling: We started making a few lamps. I was a fine art student. I needed to make some money on the side. Dad was a farmer and then he built several baches. He started doing a bit of furniture. I started adding my eye to it. And it snowballed really. We started out of an old mechanic’s garage in Clevedon. We started a little store out there at the front edge of the garage. People would come out to the farmers’ market and spend the day out there. We capitalised on that and were open on the weekend. Ninety per cent of our customers lived in town so we decided to come into town two and a half years ago [and opened a shop in St Marys Bay, Auckland]. And we’ve just built an American-style barn: a purpose-built workshop in Clevedon and everything will be made there.
U: How is the product made?
RS: Everything’s made by us or local artisans, all pretty much from Auckland. We’ve built really good relationships with local people. That’s really important to us because, if we can’t make it ourselves, we find someone. It’s all hand cut and planed, rather than computer machined. That’s our aesthetic: low tech, hand rendered. It’s quite different to some other New Zealand designers, who are about making it over-manufactured.
U: How does your relationship with your dad work?
RS: We are quite intuitive in the way we work; we sort of understand each other. There’s crossover between designer and maker. Paul Dowie, my partner, half owns the business with me but he can’t work with us a lot because he just doesn’t get it. Dad and I have an obvious agreement about things. Dad’s our golden ticket: his design and work ethic is out of control. He gets up at 4.00am. But we couldn’t exist without each other.
U: How has the business grown?
RS: We’d never have envisaged this when we opened the garage. We’re sold at Jardan in Australia. We’ve just been picked up by Mark Tuckey [in Sydney and Melbourne]. A lot of people from here go to Milan Furniture Fair, but we’re not a fat business so we went to Melbourne instead and that’s been really great for us. We’re sold in Hong Kong and we’ve recently had a lot of interest from New York. And we’ve now got five employees.
U: How has production increased?
RS: I used to beg the metal spinner we work with to make five pieces for us: now they make 50 for me in a run. We’re making about 150 pieces of each design a year. Forty per cent of it goes offshore at the moment. At times we’re a bit overwhelmed, but we’re not shy of hard work. I love what I do so I don’t really find it work.
U: How did your 2012 collaboration with Kate Sylvester come about?
RS: Kate and her husband Wayne [Conway] have been long time fans of the store. Wayne loved the story behind Douglas + Bec and was thrilled to know it was local. There was a lot of crossover with their ethical practice. They asked me to design five pieces. I came back to them with 10 and we couldn’t cull any of them. It’s fashion camping items: the two most successful are the folding brass stool and the swan. Both of them I came up with in five minutes. It was the first time I’d ever had a brief. I was so excited and it’s helped me practise using different materials.
U: What’s next?
RS: We’ve got a whole new collection, which is all brass. And we’re re-interpreting our original pieces. It’s basically a superminimal range: functional and beautiful lines with minimal treatment of the materials. Lightness of the hand is the term.
U: What’s the long-term plan for Douglas + Bec?
RS: I want to be in more stores around the world. I like exporting beautiful products all around the world. The brand speaks of New Zealand: that ‘roll your sleeves up’ mentality. I want to evolve as a designer a bit more: push that handdrawn stuff with more collections.
