The Furniture Makers Company

This Award, and this is only the second, is given, occasionally, by the Worshipful Company of Furniture Makers in recognition of an outstanding career within the furniture industry in the UK and a major contribution to it.

Andrew is the only person in the world making “Infinity Models” This Renaissance concept involves making a model of a building, with architectural features inside, using specially coated glass. Interior lighting then reveals all the internal details reflected hundreds of times, in all directions, and disappearing into infinity.

Mr Varah makes much else besides his Infinity Models, and has twice won the Claxton Stevens Prize for the piece of furniture judged the best of those awarded the Company’s Bespoke Guild Mark in any one year. He was a notable chairman of the Company’s Bespoke Guild Mark Committee and has also been chairman of The Livery Companies Wood Group, comprising The Turners, The Upholders, The Carpenters, The Furniture Makers and The Joiners & Ceilers.

On show at the Mansion House was possibly Andrew’s finest Infinity Model, the church of St Stephen, Walbrook, a church which Pevsner describes as “ The most perfectly proportioned building in the whole of Europe”, in which Andrew designed and made the seating, and which now displays the only altar Henry Moore sculpted. The Infinity Model clearly fascinated the Lady Mayoress, Mrs Barbara Bear.

A happy coincidence is that the Mansion House is next door to St Stephen, where Andrew’s father, Chad Varah, was the Rector. Shortly after taking up his post he founded the Samaritans, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Ends - 15 June 2011

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