“I had always worked with my hands and been around woodworking,” Ros Broughton says. In fact, you could say it’s in his blood: In the early 1900s, Broughton’s grandfather helped revive the Hitchcock Chair Company—among the first chair production houses in the U.S.
The Connecticut-bred craftsman moved to San Francisco in 1997 and started Broughton Woodworking, which catered to high-end clients seeking custom furniture and cabinetry, but “I felt like I was struggling to hold onto [my] craft,” he explains. “I just love making things, and I didn’t want to give that up or have to only make things for certain types of people.” And so, the question became, “How can I keep doing the things I love doing while getting it out there into the world?”
Broughton noticed “a big hole in the market when it came to mid-priced, high-quality, easy-to-get-your-hands-on stuff,” he says. To reach a larger audience, he brought in David Charne as his business partner, who was helping brands such as L.L. Bean and Lululemon grow their businesses. Thanks to an introduction by Broughton’s brother-in-law, Fyrn was born in 2012.
Their debut collection, Stemn, launched four years later as the firm’s “first attempt to get a very high-quality product out to people at a fair price,” Broughton explains. “If we got it right with the [six] chairs and stools,” all of which marry the eye-catching exposed patented metal bracket to the durable North American hardwood, Fyrne could eventually develop other items including tables and desks. “I wanted to maintain the warmth of wood and add the strength of metal,” Broughton says, but create something that “still looked like a chair.”
The Mariposa chair, Linden counter stool, and Stanyan barstool from the Stemn series, all with Fyrn’s signature exposed metal bracket.
Because of its unique appearance, the series—all manufactured in-house in his Bay Area workshop—has been sourced for restaurants throughout and around San Francisco. Belotta, Absinthe Group’s Spanish eatery designed by Kendall Wilkinson, for instance, boasts his Mariposa and Stanyan chairs and barstools in dark leather upholstery to evoke a Mediterranean style.
Next up, Broughton and Charne say they’ll be refining and expanding the Stemn collection, starting with a lounge chair and end tables that won’t “fit the same exact aesthetic but will fit our ethos,” Charne explains. “We don’t sit around and talk about things for too long,” Broughton adds, “we just make choices—hopefully good [ones]—and we go.”
