In Conversation with Matthew Hilton

With 2021 being the 30th year anniversary of Matthew Hilton’s Balzac armchair for SCP, we delved into the SCP archive in search of content and material that would shed some new light on this iconic design. We were totally blown away with the discovery of a previously unseen film about Matthew Hilton’s design practice made by Chris Eckersley in 1997. At the time, Chris was doing some work as a university lecturer and had decided to make some films for students about designers working in industry.

The film features a visit to Matthew’s London studio, to the workshop downstairs where he did a lot of prototyping, and finally to SCP on Curtain Road, in all its 90s glory. An enormous thanks goes to Chris Eckersley for finding and making the film available to us, and more importantly for taking an interest at the time. Enjoy a wonderfully honest and unfiltered profile, made during a fascinating period in the British design industry.