Nick completed a combined carpentry and joinery apprenticeship, spent several years in the building industry working on domestic housing and was in charge of outfitting the joinery for the Sheridan towers in his early 20’s. Following a stint in Germany in the mid 90’s working with master stair craftsmen his return to Melbourne and his affinity for timber led him to his work as a furniture maker and starting The Timber Trip. Nick’s experience on building sites and in the construction industry give him an edge when installing and troubleshooting for inbuilt joinery projects. Over thirty years of working with timber makes him a wood oracle, he knows how timber will perform and how it may fail, a true craftsman he is always able to find a solution. Nick’s specialises in shaping often hard to work with Australian with timbers into furniture items.

Sunny is an accredited Architect, she completed a Bachelor of Architecture with Honours at RMIT, and worked leading Melbourne architecture firms before undertaking some of her own Architectural projects. Sunny has a continued presence in the workshop – both on the tools and liaising with clients.

Being a furniture maker and working with wood is a way of life. Timber draws you to it, it chooses you. Often our work is a result of what the timber “tells us to make”. The Timber Trip’s pieces are streamlined and hand crafted using traditional joinery techniques to let the integrity of the timber tell its story. We use all the timber – we don’t chop out knots, we work with the imperfections not wasting any of this valuable resource. As designer makers there is a close affinity with the material we work with and it’s connection to the natural environment. We are committed to the most environmental approach possible and have made a commitment to only use recycled or select salvage timbers. We do this because we are committed to creating the world we want to live in rather than accepting the status quo. Our business is in it’s own small way a force for change. When designing, creating and crafting we are conscious that furniture is what makes a room habitable, it is what the body comes in contact with, it fills the space between the room and the human.
Three ingredients are the basis of all Timber Trip products; sustainably sourced timber, quality craftsmanship and restraint of design to create pieces that will last for generations.

Nick established The Timber Trip in 1993 on Brunswick Street Fitzroy with a group of makers. The core philosophy of The Timber Trip at its origin was the use of recycled timbers to create well crafted furniture. In the beginning Nick educated his clients about the benefits of using recycled Australian hardwoods and why he was taking this approach. The business has always considered the environmental impacts of the furniture industry as predominant in its practice. The original Timber Trip logo was based on the recycle symbol, swapping out the the arrows for T’s. Nick was practising a regenerative business with circular economic principals before they became commonplace in our current language. By the late 90’s the Nick became the solo manager of the Timber Trip, Nick continued to grow and expand the business.

The gentrification of Brunswick street along with new owners of the building that housed the “Trip” saw a relocation to Abbotsford for 10 years and then a sea change to Pambula NSW for 5 years. This period on the remote far south coast of NSW was a special time where Nick worked directly with a local mill and crafted many items of furniture for clients and wholesale beds, bedside tables and cabinets for Southwood Home using the beautiful hardwoods of the far south coast. During this time Nick and his architect wife Sunny also designed and constructed the award winning House of Cupboards.

Over 30 years the business has shape shifted, expanding at one stage to having over 8 employees and has now contracted to a small team comprising Nick & Sunny and casual local artisans for larger projects. The Timber Trip morphed into WilderCoyle Furniture & Design while in Pambula as it represented the partnership of Nick & Sunny and her contribution to the business. Each piece is currently crafted in the workshop in Footscray. Sunny felt herself gravitating towards the workshop and assisting in running the business when Nick and her children were very young. Not ready for the demands of returning to work full time in an architects office she was drawn to the relative immediacy of fabricating a piece of furniture. Sunny realised that designing small interventions in a house such as bespoke shelving or cabinetry transforms spaces and increases the amenity at a fraction of the price of renovation.

The Timber Trip has a loyal band of clients that have followed us and continue to order from us as well as making new connections. We have undertaken every type of joinery and furniture project imaginable including; Commercial, Residential, Educational, Hospitality, Banks, Not for profit NGO’s. We have made everything in scale from jewellery boxes to whole houses.