Ashley Hicks

Ashley Hicks was born in 1963 and trained at the Architectural Association in London. He worked briefly for his father, famed interior designer David Hicks, before starting his own design practice. In 1997, Hicks designed his first furniture collection, named Jantar Mantar, starting with his interpretation of an ancient Greek Klismos chair, working in India with village carpenters. At the same time, he designed a collection of jewellery produced by Gem Palace in Jaipur, India and became fascinated by the faceting of gemstones. From 2000 on, Hicks designed collections of fabric and carpet inspired by his late father’s work and wrote several books on David Hicks’s life and career.

As part of his interior design practice, Hicks began making objects with his own hands, starting with cabinet handles and candlesticks sculpted in polymer clay and cast in bronze. He moved on to carving and gilding wooden console tables and mirror frames and eventually to working with resin, which he carves, builds up or paints. The focus of his work has gradually shifted from designing interiors to making objects to fill them, from miniature tabletop totem sculptures to large-scale furniture and paintings. Hicks creates hand-painted panels and interiors, working on his favored medium of jute burlap, often painting panoramas of cities. He draws inspiration from historical objects in museums and institutions and from the natural forms of crystals, rocks and coral.

Ashley’s fascination with historic interiors has also led him to become a photographer of them, publishing books on Buckingham Palace and Knole and contributing regularly to Cabana Magazine.