Haldane Martin

Haldane Martin qualified as an industrial designer at the Cape Tech in 1992, also winning the Style Student Award. From these promising beginnings he moved on to work for Richard Sparks Industrial Design consultancy but, just a year later, branched off on his own to develop furniture and homeware designs.

Martin established Haldane Martin™ in 2002 and since then has personally designed over 40 original furniture pieces as the owner, director and head designer of his design studio, Haldane Martin Iconic Furniture and Interior Design.

Martin's approach to design is a holistic one, meeting the needs of the whole human being. His furniture is simultaneously meaningful for the spirit, beautiful for the soul and nurturing for the body. He believes that our environments and the objects that populate them need to reflect our deeper intelligence and wisdom as human beings.

Since the Haldane Martin design studio opened its doors for business, it has picked up clients such as Swala Line, Woolworths, Namib Lodge, Singita-Lebombo, Arrabella Sheraton, Cecile & Boyd, Source Interior Brand Architects, Truth Coffee and BOS Ice Tea. Their most well-known piece is possibly the iconic Zulu Mama café chair with the seat woven in recycled plastic by rural women, which is now part of Nando's Headquarters' design collection.

In 2011, Haldane Martin expanded the design studio to include a professional interior design service, with a strong focus on bespoke installations and customised furniture designs. The integrated, iconic brand-building philosophy, and high-quality execution that goes into the award-winning furniture designs, is also applied to private and commercial interior environments. The studio is perhaps most well-known for their interior for Truth Coffee in Cape Town, which won Haldane Martin a Gold Loerie in 2015, and which was featured in Design Indaba's Most Beautiful Object in South Africa in 2014.