The nature of nurturing

It’s easy to forget when looking at the latest yachts that there’s more to the story than the finished article. Behind every element of the interior, for example, there’s a story of dedicated joiners, carpenters and cabinetmakers creating sometimes subtle, sometimes extravagant, but always exquisite panels, doors, furniture and more. There’s the story behind the owners’ desires and the designers’ visions, and there’s the story of the often unsung artisans quietly applying their extraordinary skill to create bespoke wonders for both.

More recently, however, another story is emerging and it is being told by some of the most renowned names in the industry. Andrew Winch – founder of the eponymous Winch Design studio, which has been responsible for some of the most iconic superyachts of the past three decades – typifies a move to highlight the work of the exceptional craftspeople the superyacht industry draws on, and to offer them support through collaborative marketing and through sponsorship schemes.

For one, the sheer quantity of work for bespoke, handcrafted elements in furniture, decorations, finishes and art that the superyacht industry produces has led to a thriving network of boutique artisans around the world, and that also impacts local economies and communities. “We look to create as much as we can in the UK, but that doesn’t stop us making pieces in Bali if that’s the best manufacturer, for example,” offers Andrew Winch. “As another example, for a project in Cape Town we made a lot of furniture down there because it would have been exorbitantly expensive to ship that value of furniture built in Europe down to South Africa. So we chose to make quite a lot of furniture in Cape Town itself and we had to find those manufacturers locally. That happens all over the world.”

There’s no question, though, that 2020 and the pandemic presented some serious challenges, especially for the one-man-bands and small ateliers, whose work all but dried up as global lockdowns impacted industries far and wide. Winch and the Winch Design team – which now numbers some 150 people – looked at how they could step in.

“Ever since my wife Jane and I started the studio in 1986, the company has always felt like a family,” Winch offers. “There were all these artisans that we would use, businesses of one or two people to maybe a maximum of 10 people that were being run on a shoestring. For example, we have a wood carver who oversaw a huge, two-year, six-man project for us creating a four-storey wooden carved wall of an imaginary tree for the Feadship yacht Sea Owl. A shipyard recently hired him to do some fantastic doors for us on a new project but in the interim he had been finding it hard during COVID to get new business.”

Winch and the studio’s Directors considered what they could do to help, and a programme called Under Winch’s Wing was born. “It was created by the Winch studio as a family to look after and help all those small businesses survive, develop friendships and be able to communicate what they do,” Winch explains. A lot of it during the pandemic, he says, was about making the Winch Design finance team available to help those artisans and businesses source sponsorship or apply for government financial support. “It was really that issue of putting an arm around people who needed some help,” Winch says.

The programme’s portfolio of artisans and craftpeople was handpicked by Winch and the studio team, supporting and celebrating the skills of the smallest craftspeople and suppliers who have helped bring Winch designs to life over the past three decades. The portfolio currently includes 15 individuals and businesses, from solo artisans such as wood carver and sculptor Paul Jewby and one-off furniture maker Laurent Peacock to textile specialists Palestrina London, potters Fenella Elms and artist collective DKT Artworks.

“It meant a lot to us and I think it has meant a lot to them that we took away the mystique of secrecy, something that has been there for years – you find your artists and you don’t let anybody know about them because they are your secret find, your secret supplier,” Winch says. “We said, ‘let’s move away from that’. So we put them all on our Instagram, and we created lectures and we’ve had them do exhibitions with us. Under Winch’s Wing,” he adds, “has been symptomatic of the culture at Winch Design, that we care about other people.”

It’s not just the Under Winch’s Wing scheme that the Winch studio is using to support craftspeople – they are also proud participants in the Queen Elizabeth Scholarship Trust (QEST), which was established in 1990 to help support craftspeople of all ages and backgrounds by funding their courses, apprenticeships or one-on-one training with masters. “We are a collective, and that’s why we joined with QEST and support the QEST scholarship,” Winch enthuses, “and it’s why more generally we are working with and always looking for new producers, some of whom may be very small businesses only doing two bespoke chairs, or others who may do 20 pieces of furniture for us.”

The Winch team’s approach reflects initiatives up and down the global superyacht industry to nurture talent, and it speaks to the impact that the superyacht industry has on myriad lives and in keeping myriad skills alive. “The superyacht industry is the biggest industry for patronage,” Winch offers, “because there are no restrictions on what you can build visually – there are no councils and no neighbours. It allows patronage to a level that is outside of normal life. It gives craftspeople and artisans the opportunity of doing or building something that they may never have had the opportunity or the funding to do before.”