Derek Wilson grew up on the west coast of Scotland spending his free time at school in the art room throwing pots, painting and drawing. He continued to feed this passion after high school, briefly attending various art schools in Glasgow and London in the hopes of becoming a sculptor. But he never found the right program for him. “I struggled with the whole ‘art world talking about art.’ I felt like a lot of kids were making art and then just making up the story to go with the art,” he tells Business of Home. “It didn’t quite work out.” He took some time away, working for his father, a builder, and traveling around Europe gaining inspiration. He eventually landed at a furniture-making course in Glasgow, where he met his future business partner, John Galvin. “I figured furniture was a kind of sculpture, but with purpose,” says Wilson. “I didn’t have that issue [of] trying to talk about the chair. You know, you can sit on it. If it’s a table, you can eat on it.”
After completing the course, in 2002 he found his way to New York, where he worked for various studios and met his future wife. They moved back to Scotland to start a family, and that’s when Wilson teamed up with Galvin, who was already running a business renovating apartments, kitchens and bathrooms. The duo started crafting whiskey display cases, and the company took off. Then in 2014, they launched a more furniture-focused business called Faolchú, a Gaelic word meaning “wolfhound.” In 2017, Wilson stepped away from the daily operations of the whiskey business in order to devote his energy to Faolchú, which now employs six craftsmen.
Wilson begins each piece with a sketch before moving into prototypes. In this stage, he doesn’t focus too heavily on the joinery details, but rather on how to get the overall form right before it’s put into production. “Sometimes when I’m working on something, things happen. Sometimes by accident. You maybe make a wrong cut,” he says. “Or you get ideas as you’re working on the piece. There’s a little element of that where you’re starting the process, and then you’ll see where it takes you.” The pieces are all hand-finished, crafted from wood from around the world, but primarily species native to Scotland. “We use traditional methods, and I want the furniture to last,” he adds. “If you take care of a piece of furniture, it will last tens, hundreds of years.”

Wilson’s favorite pieces include the Lusan end table, crafted from Scottish holly with brass dowels; and the sycamore Maonag dining table, which features a sculpted bronze base. “I’m very meticulous with detail. For a shape or a form, I’ll maybe spend four or five hours just tweaking something here and there until it looks right,” he says. A new product for this year is a bench made from yew logs he purchased years ago that are only now dry enough to use. Sustainability is at the core of the brand’s ethos—the artisans source local timbers, recycle sawdust to heat their workshop, use water-based lacquers, and of course, craft handmade pieces that won’t need to be replaced for years to come. Down the line, Wilson wants to continue to debut product collections while still making time for more sculptural one-off pieces.
“I [was] never interested in becoming famous or having my name up in lights. I just wanted to enjoy what I did. I’m so lucky to be able to come to work every day and do stuff I enjoy and teach people,” says Wilson, who still runs the whiskey case company with Galvin. “I get a lot of enjoyment even seeing the younger guys that I work with learn, seeing them become better at what they do. But you have to be a businessman as well, because I’ve got to run two businesses. It’s exciting to balance.”
For more information on Faolchú, check out its website or Instagram.