THE KBBREVIEW INTERVIEW | Johnny Grey


The ‘Fridgedarium’


from Johnny Grey’s Unfitted Kitchen range


realised I’d misjudged what you can do with modular. I had always assumed


it was simply about


repetition, but actually it’s not, it’s something you can dismantle and put together in different con - figurations, and that’s not a crime. Then you start to think about how this fits into an overall system of how to live at home, cook and have a room that’s full of flexibility, because post-Covid very few people are now just using their kitchens to cook. But, one of the downsides of standard modular kitchens is that they’re very static – you can’t move them around, and that’s the other lovely thing about furniture. How did we lose that? The kitchen is something that surely should respond to your life? Plus, sus tainability is such a big part of this now, it’s not good enough that so many kitchens are put into landfill every year. What’s made is not very good, so people don’t value it.


Q: You’re launching a new Unfitted Kitchen range that is a bit more modular and affordable than you’re known for. What’s


the idea


behind it? A: The cost of


The Unfitted Kitchen showroom at Grey’s Hampshire home


Q: But it is designed to be more affordable. Entering into that showroom market with displaying dealers designing using your products is a big change for you. A: Yes, I really want to get this into showrooms, because nobody else is doing it like this. It doesn’t compete with other products so, in theory, it boosts and widens your appeal. My customer base has always been, yes, people with some degree of available cash, but also those who are looking for something different. Those with an eye for design and, for them, a run of MDF boxes isn’t good enough. They want something different.


I feel the kitchen industry really, really needs us - I’m sure that’s partly arrogance, but it’s also a great passion for design and craftsmanship...


making custom kitchens shot up in an absolutely unbelievable way. The price went up by something like 50%, after already being expensive in the first place, because craftsmen are expensive.


But then I realised that the Unfitted Kitchen has another lovely ele ment to it, which is that you can accumulate it over time. You only need two or three pieces to begin with and each of those pieces offers a little bit more than purely one clearly defined function.


It all has a certain degree of aesthetic reference or charm, so the pieces are not designed specifically to be 100% matching.


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Q: Where are the products made? A: We are still in the early stages now, but the bigger pieces are made in Lithuania at the moment. There’s an interesting tradition of crafts- manship that all the Nordic states have and Lithuania is a particularly good


example, so we get high-quality furniture from there. Plus, we have got access to wood from Ukraine, par ticularly olive ash, which is one of the woods that I love. Some of the smaller pieces are being made here in the UK.


Q: So what is the plan for it in terms of rolling it out? A: We want to have about 10 dealers in the UK and they’ll be very carefully chosen as people who’ve got the capacity to sell design or craftsmanship. They don’t necessarily have to be kitchen stores either. We are going to probably have what we call some secondary sales outlets that could


‘Oven and china storage cabinet’ from the Unfitted Kitchen


be art galleries for example because, don’t forget, we’re offering fur - niture, not whole kitchens. And then there will be export sales and we’ve already got our first dealer in Hawaii, which is


very exciting.


We’ll probably appoint another 10 dealers in the US.


Q: You’re opening up a whole new business at this stage of life rather


than resting on your


laurels? Why? A: Because this is what I was born to do. To make beautiful furniture and to design wonderful kitchens that people could actually partly design themselves. And I feel the kitchen industry really, really needs us – I’m sure that’s partly arrogance, but it’s also a great passion for design and craftsmanship.


I’m not saying that it’s all going to work out fine and be easy anything like that, but I feel


or


comfortable with leaving this behind as a sort of legacy project. And I hope it will work, because actually it should be one of the options that everybody has when they buy a kitchen. They can go fitted or unfitted.


I think I’d feel a bit useless if I just sat around reading nice books and giving a talk every now and again.


Q: Curiosity is a trait that never leaves


you if you have it,


regardless of age. A: I so agree, I think a lot of that comes from my Aunt, but also from studying architecture at the time I did in the 1970s in London. It was the most extra ordinary experience. Nobody knew what architecture was and, fur thermore, that was fine. That wasn’t a problem. You could say now that nobody really knows what a good kitchen is. We’re all still learning.


• December 2023


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