Hugh McCarthy came to furniture making by way of landscape architecture when he stepped sideways in 2008 into a custom furniture workshop - a detour he thought would be temporary. It wasn't.
Working from his Melbourne studio, McCarthy designs and makes everything in-house, to order. No large catalogue, no outsourced components. Each piece moves from first conversation to delivery entirely within his hands, keeping him close to both the work and the people it's made for.
His influences resist the obvious. Alongside admired designers and craftspeople, he finds inspiration in utilitarian objects that go largely unnoticed: a stainless-steel pencil sharpener, an eighties Japanese radio, a Swedish wood chisel. The logic embedded in these things, their unselfconscious rightness, informs his approach to proportion, material, and finish.
The work spans furniture and sculpture. He has built a significant body of collaborative work with some of Australia's most respected interior design studios - among them Alexander & Co., Studio Kennon, Without Studio, True Story, and Camilla Molders - alongside commissions including a six-metre boardroom table in walnut for Foolscap Studio at ANZ's head office, and a collection of sculptural pieces shown through M Contemporary Gallery in Sydney. The pieces that result don't announce themselves - they settle in and improve with time.