HISTORY OF RYCOTEWOOD

It was the late artist and philanthropist Cecil Michaelis who founded Rycote School to provide craft training for young people in 1938, in the small town of Thame in Oxfordshire. A keen supporter of the arts and crafts, he was concerned that valuable skills were in danger of being lost. Education mattered to him very much indeed.

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By 2004, we had grown and moved into the heart of the historic city of Oxford to establish a new era in furniture design and craft education as the Rycotewood Furniture Centre, part of pioneering education group Activate Learning. 

2018 saw us celebrating 80 years of furniture education and celebrations began in fine style with an exhibition with our validating body Oxford Brookes University. A month long exhibition at University’s Glass Tank gallery presented outstanding work by esteemed alumni from the 1970s to the present day.