We are Pfeifer. We design furniture.
Pfeifer is an award winning design studio that identifies ‘collaboration’ as the heart of their creative practice. Combining expertise across a range of strategic disciplines, Pfeifer fuse their design vision with a highly considered creative process, resulting in furniture that is distinguished by a clarity of ideas and fully resolved by their attention to detail.
With the guiding principle “everything superfluous was removed” Pfeifer look to simplify the complex, to bring to the forefront the natural beauty inherent in honest materials and timelessly essential forms, intuitively balancing the practical with the poetic. With curiosity and passion, Pfeifer question the expected, finding novel and innovative expressions in form, materiality and function, while seeking to unify industrial production and usability with craft and beauty; resulting in furniture with a unique character.
Founded in 2003, Pfeifer have consistently created award-winning furniture for design-led brands across Europe, the UK and internationally. This recognition includes 3 Design Guild Marks and a German Design Award.
Based in London for over a decade, founding partners Leonhard and Karla recently relocated to the Atlantic coast in Portugal, and continue to collaborate with design brands globally.
Whilst our brand vision is simple - well designed furniture for the design conscious consumer - our story is not. Our story is about two people who inspire, stimulate and push each other to achieve more than they could on their own. The story of Pfeifer is the story of us.
We met in 1989, in a small fabric store in a nondescript shopping center in the middle of a hot Australian suburb. One of us was from Australia, one was not. One worked in the fabric shop, and one of us was a regular customer who liked to sew unique pieces. One of us was argumentative, one of us was nonplussed by this. We sparked off each other and eventually became friends.
We both dreamed of something bigger, something different. We were both passionate about life with a love of travel, design and art. We travelled independently, crossing most of the globe but always managing to keep in contact during our travels via pen and paper. After ten years of friendship we eloped on a mountain top in New Zealand and 7 months later relocated to London.
Landing in London in May 2001 we nestled into the Antipodean community in west London for a bit. This was comforting but not what we had come for so traversed the city to Bethnal Green and put down some roots.
East London was good to us, full of designers, artists, musicians and interesting thinkers. Our small community expanded and filled us with ideas and visions. Full-time design jobs were cast aside (not lightly) and a small studio space was carved out in an old warehouse on Vyner Street.
Some best selling furniture, some awards and some children came our way. All of it was hard work and all of it was well earned.
At times our team has been small, at times our team has been tiny; we have worked from our kitchen table late into the night, in cafes, by drafty windows in a crumbling canal-side studio in Hackney. The one constant is it has always been us, working side-by-side.
20 years later we relocated our young family and small team to Portugal with a desire to be closer to our producers, more connected for trade shows and with the hope of an ocean life. Porto is a blustery, crumbly, water-orientated city that is full of warmth and history and an impressive furniture tradition.
We have come a long way since we first met over 30 years ago, but this new change feels like it is just the beginning. 2024 has seen the beginning of our own brand and our new studio/shop Snocker.shop here in Portugal.
Thanks for stopping by.
x Karla and Leonhard
Ps. One of us wrote this story, and the other fact-checked it.