The Officer's Field Set Collection

 In 2015 the American leather goods company Ghurka asked us to make something for their fortieth anniversary. The brief was specific and rather charming: two folding chairs and a table, compact enough to ride in the boot of a grand tourer. We exceeded it slightly, building a leather-clad trunk to house the chairs that serves as the table itself.

The set debuted at Fortnum & Mason in London that autumn, timed to the two-hundredth anniversary of Gurkha service to the British Crown. Only three were made. One was presented to the then Prince of Wales, now King Charles III, in recognition of his long association with the Royal Gurkha Rifles as Colonel-in-Chief and patron of the Gurkha Welfare Trust.

That should have been the end of it. Instead the chair kept being asked for.

A client wanted it drawn up to the dining table, and the O.F.S. Dining Chair followed. Another wanted arms at the head of that table, and the Arm Chair. A third wanted to recline, and the Lounge came last — lower, deeper, raked back at the angle a body settles into when there is nothing in particular to be done for the next hour. What began as two chairs in a trunk is now a family of five, and every one of them still folds.

Five pieces: the Field Set entire, the original Folding Field Chair, the Dining Chair, the Arm Chair, and the Lounge. Twenty-six woods, the full library of leather and fabric, six colors of English bridle strapping.