Matthew Burt

Matthew Burt (born 1951) is a British furniture designer-maker who runs a contemporary practice from a studio and workshop (established 1978) based in the South Wiltshire village of Sherrington, west of Salisbury.

Burt's workshop steadily built on a reputation for furniture design that allies structurally robust work that fulfils its function with a lean, elegant line and the occasional bravura surface.

"[2] Taking an approach of simplicity and honesty to his chosen materials (in the main, sustainable sources of English woods such as ash, oak, maple, cherry, sycamore, elm and walnut), Burt began his career designing within the idiom of Arts and Crafts furniture but adding contemporary notes such as elegantly bevelled edges and subtly cut-out sections to the top of tapered legs.

Burt explained that this piece was "seemingly simple… relying on the intrinsic strength of the oak to span a long unsupported surface…’v-grooved' to communicate the sensual and tactile delights of wood.

The benches suit the galleries of the original building with as much grace and purpose as the modernist extension by Rick Mather, and the ability to tie together the public spaces was an important part of the commission.

There is a new element to three benches commissioned in September 2011 for the Egyptian Galleries (and installed in November) with a subtle change of configuration of the seat to the leg, with its 'flare' as Burt says 'more referentially apposite' to the tenor and the subject of the spaces.

The upper floor of the building’s west wing was redeveloped in 2010–11 to provide 800 square metres of galleries for recent and contemporary art, and these presented a particular challenge as they contained rooms of both the 1920s and 60s with differing proportions.

Their narrow rectangular form, echoing their setting, is off-set by the subtly convex line of the seat top, and relieved by a lightly curved upstand which is placed off-centre.

He changed his approach incrementally to this commission to respond directly to the spaces and their differing collections (including major Impressionist paintings as well as highly elaborate 18th century furniture).