David Paris and myself (Gary Bennett) met while on a surfing holiday in Queensland in 1982. We kept in touch and six years later decided we wanted to leave our mark on the world by designing and creating our own special style of furniture. The name of our company would be "Jah Roc Furniture" and our mission would be to create a range of legendary furniture pieces combining the best of West Australian natural materials: wood, stone and iron.
To make our furniture collectable we would burn our name into every piece with a branding iron. We also number and sign all our work, so in years to come it will become sought after and very valuable. Our designs are unique and are not drawn from one particular design era, but from many, so when people look back in years to come they will identify our furniture with our current era being the 1990's.
To make our product even more collectable, we use woods reclaimed from old bridges and warehouses and we stamp the name of the building along with the year it was built and when it was taken down.
Because we saw our furniture as art, we decided to exhibit it in art gallery's in the South West of Western Australia. Our designs were well received. We found ourselves winning many industry and art awards. In 1989, we were invited to exhibit our work in Beverley Hills Los Angeles, California. Again our work was well received and we found ourselves exporting to the U.S.A. on a regular basis. In 1991, we were invited to exhibit in Milano (Italy) and Tokyo (Japan), where we also sold our furniture. At this time, we had moved from my backyard shed into larger premises in Osborne Park, Perth WA. By 1992, we were fast outgrowing our workshop in Osborne Park and we decided we should start hunting for a more fitting home for our now thriving business.
It was in 1993, when my wife and I were visiting my parents in York WA that we found our new home. York is Western Australia's oldest inland town and is set in the Avon Valley, which is a rich farming area. The fertile soil of the valley allowed many a farmer to prosper and with their wealth, they built beautiful buildings as their homes, community halls, hotels and churches. These fine buildings are well preserved architectural statements of yesteryear with strong English and European design characteristics.
One building in particular, being the Old York Flour Mill, was for sale and with its towering thick brick walls and huge hand hewn timbers as a centre structure, we thought this fine example of early Australian Industrial Architecture would make a lovely home for our company. As I had a history myself in York with my father being the headmaster of the local school when I was a boy and my mother's father also being the headmaster at the same school when she was a little girl, we decided to bring our wives and young families and settle in York.
We purchased the Flour Mill and surrounding sheds at auction in June 1993 and as the building was very run down, we moved to York and began renovating the whole site. For the first nine months we lived in tents in one of the old sheds and worked night and day restoring the mill and setting it up as a gallery for our furniture and also some of WA's top artists. We re-roofed the main brick building, replaced and patched the floors and rebuilt the doors and windows. We wanted to retain as much of the history as possible so we left all the old grain chutes as they were and worked around them so they are now features in our Gallery. The effect this has on our furniture designs and art is fantastic.
While we were doing the mill renovation we also set our furniture workshop up in one of the huge sheds that was once used for grain storage. This shed with its 30-foot high corrugated iron roof, pitched on hand cut white gum bush poles, makes a fabulous studio/workshop for us to create our masterpieces. We use traditional joinery methods in our manufacturing with a lot of handwork involved, so to have such an earthy atmosphere really suits us down to the ground.
We now have people that come to our mill gallery from all over Australia and the world. We have recently sent pieces to Hong Kong, Japan, Switzerland, USA, Scotland and London. Our furniture has continued to grow in popularity and value, especially those looking for something different. For example, a sideboard purchased by one of our early customers in 1989 for $3500 now sells for $7900, which makes them very happy and our famous Moondyne Kitchen Work Benches, which sold for $480 in 1987, now sell for $1990. We also have private collectors who have been so taken with our designs, they have invested over $100,000 in our furniture.
In recent times, the Jah Roc Mill Gallery site has grown to include 10 studios housing artists of various crafts. These artists are on display for the public to view at work and look through their studios. The Jah Roc Cafe is now open for business 7 days a week. Three floors of the mill display furniture, art, woodturning, sculptures, pottery and more, the top floor is being used for conferences and our West Shed is used as a boutique hardware store and carries a RM Williams clothing range.