ABOUT

Jon Restores

Rella Creates

Fox & Wedge is a curated destination for designer mid-century furniture, based in a studio in Torquay, where the Great Ocean Road begins. Every piece we offer has been sourced for its maker, its material and its story, then restored by hand until it is ready to be lived with again.

We work across Danish, Scandinavian, European and Australian design, seeking out the sideboards, dining chairs, lounge pieces and lighting that defined an era built on honest materials and considered form. Nothing here is mass produced, and nothing is chosen simply to fill a gap in a room. Each piece earns its place through the quality of its original design and the care that goes into bringing it back.

Fox & Wedge is built on one belief, that the best homes are built on furniture with history and craftsmanship behind it, not on what happens to be in fashion this year. Between them, a shared love of mid-century modern design, and a studio built around restoring only the most beautiful and iconic pieces to fill a home with.

HOW IT STARTED

It started with our own house

When we renovated our first home we did what everyone does. Walked the big showrooms, bought things that matched, filled the rooms. It looked finished and it felt like nothing. A house is not made a home by new furniture. It is made by things with some history in them, things somebody built properly, things that carry a mark or two and a story you did not write.

So we looked further back, and found a period that had already worked it out. The way a Danish cabinetmaker in 1958 would solve a problem with a joint rather than a bracket. A time confident enough to believe an ordinary chair should be beautiful, affordable and last a lifetime, and then to go and build one. Nearly seventy years on, it has outlasted every trend that came after it, without trying to.

The restoring is the part we did not see coming. Taking a finish back far enough to find rosewood or teak grain that decades of old lacquer had buried. The hour when a piece stops looking tired and reveals what it was actually built on, clean lines, form following function, nothing added to hide it. That hour is the reason for all of it.

Jon came at it through the making, one restoration that was meant to take a weekend and became the beginning of a lifelong pursuit. Seven years and more than a thousand pieces later, that same instinct for timber and form still runs the workshop, guided by craftsmanship, honest materials and considered design. Rella is the creative director behind Fox & Wedge, sourcing every piece with a sharp eye for form, texture and story, and shaping how it's presented so it feels less like an object and more like a piece of history brought back to life.

Before we knew it, we had furnished our home twice over. That is when Fox & Wedge began. We restore what deserves it, and we hope it finds its way to you.

WHAT WE LOOK FOR

Furniture made by people who meant it

We are interested in the makers who changed how furniture was built. Hans Wegner, who built the joint itself into the design rather than hiding it. Finn Juhl, who shaped seat frames to appear to float free of their base. Johannes Andersen, who let teak and rosewood carry the design through sculptural, organic curves. All of them part of the same fifties and sixties Danish movement that treated construction as something worth showing, not something to disguise. Australian makers like Tony Parker, Fred Lowen and Featherston, who took that same Scandinavian influence and reworked it into something distinctly their own. Americans like Charles and Ray Eames, George Nelson and Florence Knoll, who pushed the idea further again, form following function, mass-produced without losing the craft behind it.

Our taste runs wider than mid-century alone. Bauhaus, art deco, post-modern and Japanese design all end up in the studio, along with hand-made Persian rugs, original art, vintage and modern designer lighting and the occasional object nobody can quite categorise. The common thread is not simply age. A piece earns its place here either as genuine mid-century or design-history work, or as a new piece from a design house or maker with real standing behind it, houses like Møllers, still family-run and still producing Niels O. Møller's original designs today.

Pieces come to us through container imports from Denmark, local sourcing and private sellers, and relationships with galleries and artists working in both imported and contemporary Danish and designer furniture. A few arrive close to original condition. Most do not, and that is where the real work happens, telling history from damage and bringing a piece back to what it was meant to be.

IN THE WORKSHOP

Restored in Torquay, the slow way

Restoration is a series of small decisions about what to keep. Forty years of family dinners leave marks, and some of those are the reason the piece is worth having. A water ring from last winter is something else. Getting that distinction right is what separates a restoration from a renovation.

We finish pieces to suit what the timber actually deserves. Too often, beautiful grain and organic character have been buried under a sprayed lacquer at some point in a piece's life, and part of our job is bringing that back before we finish it properly. We refinish with safe, VOC-free modern products like hardwax oils, applied by hand over several days, alongside shellac, oils and waxes, and traditional Danish methods where a piece calls for them. We work with these materials every day, so we choose what's genuinely safe, for us, and for your home, your kids, your pets. An oil finish can be topped up by hand, so a worn patch is a five minute fix at home with a cloth, oil and a tin of wax, not a full refinish. That is why we use it, and why we will not spray polyurethane over anything.

Joints come apart and are reglued rather than filled. Upholstery goes back to bare frame with new webbing, high-density foam and a designer fabric treated with a modern fabric guard for everyday durability. Hardware that has not been made in decades is turned by hand or 3D printed to match.

Danish methods, old and new

Rosewood gets the treatment it was built with. Joints come apart and are reglued rather than packed with filler, veneer is patched with matching timber, and brass fittings are cleaned rather than swapped out. Traditional Danish techniques where the piece calls for them, modern ones where they genuinely do better.

STONE, GLASS AND FABRIC

A Danish armchair from 1962 has already outlived three or four of the things built to replace it, and it has not begun to tire. Solid timber, cut joints, hardware that comes apart and goes back together. It was made by people who assumed it would be repaired rather than thrown out.

We finish it the same way. Oli-Natura oils, shellac and natural waxes, chosen for what's genuinely safe in a home with kids and pets, and every bit of it repairable in place. Nothing sealed under a film that fails in ten years and takes the timber with it.

Restoration is also the most sustainable thing anyone can do with furniture. No new timber, no factory, no freight. Just something good, kept in use.

LEATHER, METAL AND MECHANISMS

Leather is repaired and conditioned where it can be saved and replaced where it cannot. Aluminium is polished back, and tilt and swivel mechanisms are taken apart, cleaned of old grease, and rebuilt with fresh bearings and lubrication so they move the way they did when new. New foam and webbing throughout. When a part has not been made in sixty years, we turn it by hand or 3D print it.
WHY VINTAGE

The best furniture already exists

A Danish armchair from 1962 has already outlived three or four of the things built to replace it, and it has not begun to tire. Solid timber, cut joints, hardware that comes apart and goes back together. It was made by people who assumed it would be repaired rather than thrown out.

We finish it the same way. Oli-Natura oils, shellac and natural waxes, chosen for what's genuinely safe in a home with kids and pets, and every bit of it repairable in place, often by you, with a cloth and a little more oil, not a trip back to a specialist. Nothing sealed under a film that fails in ten years and takes the timber with it.

Restoration is also the most sustainable thing anyone can do with furniture. No new timber, no factory, no freight. Just something good, kept in use.

visit us

Come and see it in person

The studio in Torquay is where all of it happens.

Restoration, photography, storage and sales under one roof. It is appointment only, which suits everybody. You get the space to yourself, there is no hovering, and you can see what is half finished as well as what is ready to go.

Twenty minutes from Geelong, just over an hour from Melbourne, five minutes from the beach.

Open by appointment only. Get in touch to book a time.

Location
26/18 Castles Dr, Torquay VIC 3228

Contact
0476 058 510
studio@foxandwedge.com