One family upholsterer makes the case for slow hands, honest internals and furniture that’s worth keeping.
Some moves are chosen. Martel Upholstery’s was not. When the Cremorne building it had occupied for years was sold, the Melbourne business had to find somewhere else, and found somewhere better: a larger, two-storey warehouse at 310–312 Victoria Street, in the heart of Abbotsford and easy to reach. A forced relocation can unsettle a business 37 years in the making. Here, it has simply given the hammer more room.
The hammer is literal. Mark Castaldi founded Martel in Camberwell in 1989, and his mother Elsa Castaldi lent a hand and suggested the name, Venetian dialect for ‘hammer’. Ivan Mattucci arrived three years later and is now co-owner. Studs struck individually by hand are growing scarce in a trade increasingly reliant on the staple gun. Not here.
Martel’s real argument sits out of sight. Mattucci recently stripped several pieces to take a pattern and found interiors littered with misplaced staples. The client was none the wiser. Yet frame, wadding and the cutting and gluing of foam can add or subtract five to 10 years of a piece’s life.
Its standing can be measured by the company it keeps. Melbourne interior decorator Simone Haag took an Eames lounge chair and ottoman in Métaphores fabric to the workshop for Gruyere Farm. Interior design studio Hecker Guthrie developed full-scale prototypes for Mirvac’s LIV Aston. And Mattucci still recalls the thrill of seeing Australian artist Darren Sylvester’s chaise longues, upholstered in a print drawn from McDonald’s packaging, at the National Gallery of Victoria. Designers tend to arrive once a concept is approved, the more ambitious sooner, and the most productive hours are spent at the bench, testing the fall of a cloth over a frame. Email offers no such answer.
An Eames lounge chair and ottoman, recovered in a teal patterned Métaphores fabric, takes centre stage at Gruyere Farm by Simone Haag. Against timber boards and stone, the bold textile turns a familiar Mid-Century silhouette into something newly personal. Photography by Traianos Pakioufakis.
– Mark Castaldi, founder
“The first thing we ask clients is how much do you love the piece? Sometimes the value isn’t in its collectability, but how it’s lived with the client.”
A young Mark Castaldi (1984) hand-stitches hessian to a carved timber frame, needle and twine at work. Techniques that reward this kind of patience have become rare in the trade, yet they remain central to the way Martel approaches every piece.
Clients most often misjudge the technical: how a textile behaves under tension. Kvadrat’s Hallingdal sits naturally on a Verner Panton, a pairing with history behind it as well as looks. Durability varies by household, from hard-wearing wool to washable cloth, or outdoor fabric on the family room sofa. Pet owners take swatches home for trial by cat.
Restoration turns less on value than attachment, and the opening question is how much the owner loves the piece. A well-made one should give 20 years; one client recently rang at that milestone to have a suite recovered before handing it to her daughter.
Chairs by Grant and Mary Featherston, made locally and often inherited from grandparents, demand the most. The plywood frame comes first, then Castaldi’s reference books. Padding is held back, labels are unpicked and returned to their exact positions, and fabric honours the design’s intent over strict period accuracy, its tension judged by hand rather than eye. The piece Castaldi would never part with is an R152 Contour chair.
Melbourne has been sitting on this work for decades, from Skidmark Designs’ Madame Brussels, the Gin Palace and Bar Ampere to The Toff in Town and Cookie. Mention a recent gig at The Toff and the workshop’s first response is to ask after the upholstery. It is the question of people who intend to be around to check.
Martel Upholstery is at 310–312 Victoria Street, Richmond, Monday to Friday, 9am to 4:30pm. Call (03) 9428 9900 to arrange a visit, or follow Martel on Instagram to see its latest restorations.
The piece of furniture Mark would never throw away: the R152 Contour chair by Grant Featherstone. Pieces like this begin with an assessment of the frame, because fabric, buttons and padding can only be as sound as the structure supporting them.
Photography of the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne © Grant Featherston/Licensed by Copyright Agency, Australia.
LIV ASTON by Hecker Guthrie. Photography by Shannon McGrath.
LIV ASTON by Hecker Guthrie. Photography by Shannon McGrath.
– Ivan Mattucci, co-owner
“Knowing where and how and who made it adds to the charm and story the piece holds.”
See Point Leo House by Pleysier Perkins here. Photography by Tom Blachford.
See Point Leo House by Pleysier Perkins here. Photography by Tom Blachford.
Leather and suede hides in moss, tan and chocolate show the range a single frame might be asked to carry. Choosing among them is as much a technical judgement as an aesthetic one, since each skin behaves differently under tension.
Elsa Castaldi’s hands on the workshop. Photography courtesy of Martel.
