Matthew Crawford Furniture Restoration

Matthew organised the re-​caning a chair for me recently — the third job his company has done for us and as always the results were impeccable. He deserves all the five-​star reviews.

I’m a regular After Noah customer and at last found an excuse to chat to the guys in their fabulously interesting workshop, located in the basement.
It’s like a bygone age in there and after a knowledgable conversation about a little side table I bought at auction about 3 weeks ago, I had them French polish the top for me.
They collected, delivered and did a great job, for what seems like a very competitive price.
Would highly recommend them.

Matthew restored a Regency convex mirror for us– touching up the gilt work, replacing a missing decorative wooden ball etc. We’re extremely pleased with the result. He has an obvious enthusiasm for his work, and is a pleasure to deal with; this compliments his skills.

About 3 years ago, I reviewed After Noah in Islington (
) still probably the coolest toy shop ever. They also have an antique furniture side to their business and until a couple of weeks ago, I hadn’t realised that they restored all the vintage stuff themselves in their own workshop, which is in their basement. It operates under the name of Matthew Crawford Furniture Restoration and is apparently how After Noah started. Anyway, I recently inherited a few pieces of antique furniture and one piece of which is a Georgian Library Chair. It was in a very sorry state, falling apart, polish was dull or non-​existent and it needed the seat and sides re-​caning. I had a chat to Matthew himself, who still works in the workshop and he took on the job of bringing it back to life. I can’t tell you how pleased I am with the result looks as good as new, but still looks old, if you know what I mean. I quite often buy bits and pieces in auctions and fleamarkets and I’ll almost certainly use them again.