Upton Oaks – Designers and Makers of NZ Handcrafted Furniture - since 1990Feel free to contact us about your next unique piece of furniture. Upton Oaks is an independent, New Zealand owned and operated furniture manufacturer. Established in 1990, our output covers the whole design spectrum from classic rustic through to modern contemporary and each item that we make is lovingly crafted by skilled professionals, here in NZ, who are passionate about keeping alive the methods and traditions of the generations of artisans that preceded them. Every member of our team is is dedicated to excellence. PHONE +64 (3) 578 3312 HomeOur StoryProduct CatalogueGardenAccommodationContact UsFor a limited time, only Free interior design service Soft and curvy Athena recliner An urban oasis in Berlin Find your local BoConcept Choose your nearest store on the list for address. The 2017 design catalogue 164 pages of inspiration NEW AND FEATURED PRODUCTS
20 Empire Street, Cambridge, New ZealandI thought 2017 might see things slowing up a bit - wrong again. Five containers/part shipments arrived over the summer break. Two containers were out of France. A third was full of Faux books from England. The fourth was full of contemporary French furniture. We have a lot of lovely furniture!! The fifth shipment was Kat's bleached rugs, which are pretty cool. We need a 'Rugs' button on the website. We are working on our new classical lighting collection. The first of our globe lights is in the shop. We are refining the lights' finishes - they will be uploaded to the website under 'Lighting', for your viewing pleasure. The Weatherby George bookcase and library department has worked through the holidays to catch up with orders. Doug is busy drawing plans for customers' new orders. There are a lot of wonderful upholstered pieces coming through - frame restoration, upholstery and fabric. We do a great job of ensuring the integrity of the pieces, before Kat chooses some stylish and transformative 'wow factor' fabric.
Keep an eye on the website. Due to very high demand, our wonderful European supplier has managed to source three fantastic and iconic 1950's drinks trolleys. See #101-19, the last one we had in stock. We hope you like our new look website. Thank you Tori, Kat and Mel, our two creatives and one web genius for their expertise. We have deliveries going out this week from Waipu in the North to South canterbury aincluding our forst set of Windsor Chairs going to Stuart Island! Thank you for your continued customThere’s some great leather furniture sold here. Karen Goa thought she’d found some – a gorgeous leather chair from Freedom Furniture for $719. She knew it was made of bi-cast leather when she bought the chair, but didn’t know what that meant. Once she got the chair home, she searched the web for information about bi-cast leather. That’s when she began to worry. Karen had left the store thinking she had bought a genuine leather product. But because we don’t have mandatory labelling of leather products, Karen wasn’t aware she had bought a chair covered in a composite material made of a synthetic bonding product (usually polyurethane) applied to an inferior section of animal hide.
The polyurethane coating was treated to look like genuine leather. As far as we know, bi-cast leather is not used on locally made furniture but is found on imported furniture from Asia and elsewhere. It’s usually much cheaper than genuine leather, but even top-end Italian furniture can sometimes be covered with it. We spoke to a number of leather upholstery repairers and their unanimous verdict was that bi-cast was “awful stuff”. One repairer was of the opinion the mid-section layers of hide used in bi-cast leather “had the strength of tissue paper”. Unlike genuine leather, the synthetic surface of bi-cast leather is not porous and gets damaged by perspiration. This can result in some bi-cast leather delaminating – the synthetic and hide layers separate, the surface cracks and the furniture “falls apart”. The bi-cast material itself can’t be repaired, so any patching must be done with genuine leather – making it difficult to match surfaces. Often reupholstering is the only option, which can be more expensive than the original purchase.
Dr Warren Bryson, Director of the Leather and Shoe Research Association, told us the properties of bi-cast leather varied from manufacturer to manufacturer, and also process to process. He believed some of the better examples would perform very well, but the only way to know for sure about a particular product was to test under laboratory conditions. Bryson suggested mandatory testing of imported products to ensure they passed a minimum standard of durability would significantly benefit consumers. When we went to furniture stores pretending to buy leather furniture, salespeople were usually able to tell us which sofas were made of bi-cast leather but not much about durability. We couldn’t find any material from retailers telling us that the “leather” covering on furniture had been stress-tested in a lab. Stores that stocked bi-cast leather tended to be upbeat about the product. Where written information was available it didn’t help. Freedom Furniture, for example, calls its various leather types names such as “Deco” or “Lawson” rather than a name that describes the type of leather.
There were no pamphlets or other material in-store that gave the proportion of the leather that was made from a hide (versus polyurethane) or indicated the expected life of the material. Freedom displays colour samples of its leather. On the back of the Deco bi-cast leather sample we found a statement which we believe implied the material was more natural than it really was: “This leather is indicative of the colour only. Due to the natural characteristics of leather, slight variations in colour and grain may occur." It’s easy to see how consumers, after reading this statement, would mistakenly believe they had bought a genuine leather product. On Freedom’s website bi-cast leather is said to be perfect in “high-wear areas”. This may be so, but without any durability test results how can a consumer know? Bi-cast leather looks and feels like high-grade leather. Even experts find it hard to tell the difference from simply looking at and pinching the material.