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“It’s such a wonderfully eccentric idea that could only have been dreamt up by a Brit,” says Emerald Brown. She’s talking about swing seats — a subject that, as the co-owner of a company dedicated to making the idiosyncratic garden seating, she knows a fair bit about. ODD, so named because the founders sold oddities alongside their rockers, creates bespoke versions complete with soft cushions, pretty prints, tasselled trims and a whimsical tented canvas “roof”, which can live out in the garden all summer long.
“There’s a huge amount of nostalgia around them because so many people have happy memories of them from their childhood,” says Brown.
The first swing seats were made by the Edwardians and ODD’s Old Rocker harks back to those early designs. “It’s quite rare for a product that has changed so very little to have the same allure now as it did 100 years ago,” says Brown. Ahead of the brand’s Chelsea Flower Show debut last month, she put out a call for customers’ pictures of their family rockers; the oldest image she received was from 1924.
ODD was founded 22 years ago by Robin Buchanan, who ran tile brand Fired Earth, and his wife, Brigette, a former Vogue editor and co-founder of the Cabbages & Roses line of fabrics and furnishings. Their first swing seat was inspired by a version inherited from Brigette’s great-aunt, and quickly developed a following. As each seat was bespoke, and they only made 25-30 per year, waiting lists soon mounted.
In 2021, when the Buchanans were planning to retire, they asked their friend Jonathan Brown — the entrepreneur and former chairman of The Garden Trading Company, who was also one of their earliest customers — for advice about selling the business. Instead he bought the company, along with a fabulous archive of fabric designs, and handed over the reins to the next generation. Now it’s his daughter-in-law, Emerald, who is most involved.
The craftspeople at the core of the business, meanwhile, have stayed the same. Its cutters and seamstresses are in Long Eaton, Derbyshire, in the heart of the UK’s upholstery trade; the carpenters who build the sofa back and arms are based in the workshop next door. The sprung metal base is made just outside Birmingham, by a manufacturer who has supplied hospitals for the past half-century. And the fabrics are screen-printed in Carlisle by a family-owned business founded in 1835 and still based in a sprawling 19th-century printworks. (Only the stainless steel frames are made outside the UK, in Poland.) “We rely on the expertise of our network of craftspeople,” says Brown. “And we feel a responsibility to [help] keep these skills alive.”
Last year, ODD embarked on a collaboration with Emma Grant. The London-based interior designer reimagined the structure and upholstery, adding whimsical flourishes, including hand-turned finials, tasselled canopies and, for the first time, patterned exteriors — printed on to marine-grade canvas that’s able to withstand a rainy summer.
This summer, parasols have been introduced to the offering and, as with the swings, the aim is that they will last a lifetime. “It’s really important to us that what we’re making is of the very highest quality and will stay in the family,” says Brown. When clients cautiously opt for the plainest fabrics, she encourages them to go all out in their combinations. “I always say, ‘It’s only up for five months each year, and it’s in the garden so you can really go for it.’ Choose all the fabrics and fun. It’s summery and hedonistic.”
From £3,800 for a two-seater Little Rocker and from £4,450 for a three-seater Old Rocker; oddlimited.com
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