Mary Ratcliffe traded toys for tools growing up around her dad’s workshop. The Toronto-based furniture maker describes her father as an “extreme hobbyist” who once welded an entire boat out of metal, and Ratcliffe inherited his creative genes. “When I was a little kid, I spent time at his shop doing things with him and making creations of my own. I was always drawing and sketching all these different ideas for things to build,” she says. “After high school, I didn’t really know what I wanted to do, but I knew that I wanted to do something creative.”
That pursuit took Ratcliffe to the Ontario College of Art and Design, and eventually an architecture firm, where she quickly learned she was more enthralled by the custom furniture projects than the day-to-day duties of an architect. With shop skills already under her belt, at 23, she was approached by some local interior designer and developer friends who commissioned her to make pieces for their projects. “At the beginning, I was just like, ‘Oh, you need a table. Sure, I can make a table,’” she says. “I kind of went along like that for about five years, figuring more and more things out, but never really [had] a specific direction. I always knew that I wanted to do furniture, but I didn't really have the chutzpah to be like, ‘This is what I’m doing.’”
It wasn’t until a grueling project—a full-scale renovation of an airstream trailer, which included remade walls, new electrical and plumbing, new flooring and an overall redesign—that Ratcliffe realized if she didn’t dive headfirst into furniture-making, she would get stuck in the cycle of doing odd-job projects. In late 2018, she hired her first employee and found a workshop space, and Mary Ratcliffe Studio was born. Seven years later, it has grown to a team of six who develop and produce everything by hand.
Ratcliffe begins her creative process in nature, taking note of her surroundings to dream up pieces that will stand the test of time. “I like to think of our furniture as quietly pushing boundaries—and I say quietly because we’re not trying to do something that’s so out there and crazy that you’re going to get sick of it,” she says. “The whole point of what we do is to make pieces that are going to have longevity and reflect the fact that a tree can live for hundreds of years. If we’re going to cut it down into a new piece of furniture, we want to build something that can [be around] a really long time.”
She draws freely and sculpts with clay to bring her ideas off the paper before turning to the modeling program Rhino to nail down the details. After that, she sits down with her fabrication team to discuss the prototype and then the final product is crafted using solid wood. “We live in this contemporary world, and it’s important for me that our pieces are made ideally out of solid wood, because it’s very sustainable in terms of how it goes back to the earth,” she says. “Yeah, you’re cutting down trees, but a lot of places will actually replant, and deforestation and reforestation are an important part of the life cycle of a forest.”
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One of her favorite, and most well known, pieces is the Barrow table, inspired by traditional woodworking techniques (like coopering) and contemporary geometric forms. Ratcliffe has since built out an entire collection based on the piece, including side tables and a bench. She also likes the Geo, a unique take on a traditional mirror. “Instead of using a reflective piece of glass, we get a sheet of quarter-inch aluminum from the mill, and then we actually hand-polish the surface, which creates a reflective surface but also gives you this aluminum color,” she says. “You get this hand-polished surface texture, which gives you a reflection. It adds another layer or dimension to the piece, with a little bit of an edge.”
Looking ahead, the studio will be participating in ICFF in the spring and has been toying with the idea of expanding into tabletop as well. “What we’re really doing comes back to quality and integrity and how we stand behind our work,” says Ratcliffe. “It’s funny—when I was growing up, my parents were really into antiques and antique furniture, and I was always amazed at how old some of this stuff was. I’m not saying that your table is never going to get scratched or dented or dinged. I’m talking about the ability to keep things for a long time and have them build layers of patina and layers of stories that weave into your life. That’s really what we’re trying to do.”
To learn more about Mary Ratcliffe, check out her website or Instagram.
