Luke Hughes (furniture designer)

Hughes was temporarily working as a carpenter on London building sites in 1979 when chosen to lead a design project for kitchen shelving, which led further to the refurbishment of the client's home library.^[2] This was the first library project that led to a series of bookcase designs and installations for Inns of Court lawyers.^[3] He set up his first company, Bloomsbury Joinery, in 1980 in Lamb's Conduit Street, Bloomsbury.^[2]

Hughes is the founder and CEO of Luke Hughes and Company Limited,^[4] which went out of business in May 2024. Luke Hughes’ early output consisted of furniture for the residential market.^[2] The same period also saw Hughes’ short-lived engagement with designing for the retail market. This came in the form of the ill-fated Ovolo line of bedroom furniture, originally manufactured by a Birmingham reproduction furniture company, Juckes, and sold through Heal's, Liberty's and John Lewis.^{[citation needed]} The line's failure to gain a foothold with the consumer forced a change to the targeting of institutional clients.^[3] To that end, Hughes brought architect and former managing director of Cotswold Furniture Manufacturers, Gordon Russell, on board.^[5]

• Chapel of the Resurrection, Valparaiso University, Indiana was furnished with an updated and re-engineered version of ‘the Coventry Chair’ designed originally by Richard "Dick" Russell in 1960.^[6][7]
• St Giles Edinburgh – a new Holy Table in hand-tooled Carrara marble.^[8][9][10]
• Sheffield Cathedral, stacking benches.^[11]
• The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom The library houses 35,000 books in a space intended for less than 25,000.^[12][13]
• The Sainsbury Laboratory, University of Cambridge Botanic Institute; LHCL devised a range of furniture for this, with stainless steel frames, leather upholstery and timber veneered workstations.^[14]
• In 1997, the firm made a desk for the British Embassy Moscow.^[15]