My cardboard dining room suites are cheap and cheerful

CHOOSING a new dining room suite can involve hours agonising about what will look best in your home.

So Pat Doyle has designed a cheap and easy-to-assemble alternative that is environmentally friendly.

The 75-year-old, of Thames Street, Sonning, has created a table and four chairs out of cardboard which can be slotted together and folded away after use and, when you have had enough of it, can be recycled.

Mr Doyle, a former chairman of Sonning Parish Council, spent his career as a cardboard engineer and now he is retired wanted to create durable furniture that is a bit different.

He says: “There’s tonnes of it on the internet but it’s all a bit boxy and looks a bit temporary and not terribly sophisticated. I thought there had to be a better way.

“I wanted to do something that really looked cool, as they say, and was also very practical and could be mass-produced.”

The furniture is made from recycled cardboard and corrugated board. It is covered in a protective film which is biodegradable. Any adhesives used are water rather than petroleum-based so are also biodegradable. Tiny fibres in the cardboard table top prevent it from marking.

Mr Doyle came up with a number of designs as he had to ensure the chairs were comfortable. After finishing the templates, the pieces of card were cut by Cardworks, of Bracknell.

Mr Doyle says: “It has to be designed to be produced. There’s a lot of stuff out there done by artists, beautiful things, but you can’t produce it en masse. These are designed, printed, die-cut and packed flat.

“I’m trying to create an original design but sticking to practical methods. I’m quite pleased with how it has come out. My grandchildren, who are 19 and 20, say it’s very cool!”

He says that now he has the basic design, he can make larger sets and in a bigger numbers.

“I just want to see how the market reacts to it first and then decide what to do but I think this is quite practical,” said Mr Doyle. “We’re in the process of costing it at the moment but it’s all basic stuff. I can get it produced very quickly, very easily. If somebody said, ‘Could you do me a set?’ I could do it by hand but to produce 50 sets would take about four months.”

Mr Doyle began his career in the display and advertising industry in 1961 and then worked for a company in Hayes that made point of sale material and packaging.

He recalls: “After my apprenticeship I worked for a print and design company in Tottenham and we used to get visits from colleges and schools.

“All the kids wanted to be graphic designers but I was the cardboard engineer and they never bothered coming into my studio.

“The owner was very keen on plastic and he used to say ‘cardboard is finished’ and he was a printer. Now, of course, recycling is so very important.

“You have got to understand and appreciate the material you are using and the effect it will have on the environment when it’s
discarded.”

Mr Doyle ran his own business from 1970 before retiring in 1986 but he has kept his hand in. “I do other things for people and make things occasionally and sell the intellectual rights,” he says.

“I have made furniture for customers over the years. The last thing I did was a desk made from corrugated cardboard.”

At the Sonning Scarecrow Trail in 2008 he created a life-sized paper sculpture of Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page, who has a home in Sonning.

Mr Doyle recalls: “I saw a picture of him in a rock magazine in Tesco and I stole the page out of the magazine and worked on that.”

He also made a replica of a Gibson guitar, which the rock star liked so much that Mr Doyle offered it to him but Page never returned to collect it so eventually he recycled it.

He has also produced sculptures of former Prime Minister Theresa May, who also lives in Sonning, and former villager Uri Geller.

Other creations have included lights made from paper for a wedding in Tobago and a 10-sided hat box for which he sold the intellectual rights to a friend, who then manufactured them for John Lewis.