Hinckley Friend and Owner of a Talaria 43, Will Massie Echoes Hinckley’s Strive for Performance, Durability, and Refinement with His Mckinnon and Harris Furniture Company
Innovation. Bespoke. Longevity. All of this springs to mind when thinking of a Hinckley yacht. And for outdoor furniture maker McKinnon and Harris, the brand has been upholding the same notion since 1991, when Will Massie and his sister Anne founded the company in Richmond, Virginia — where each piece is, to this day, hand-crafted to order, just like a Hinckley.
McKinnon and Harris (the middle names of Will and Anne, respective-ly, and also the maiden names of their grandmothers) has cultivated a reputation for artistry that’s a deft balance of quality and durability with beauty and refinement. “There are so many parallels in our legacy of craftsmanship,” says Will Massie, who’s the proud owner of Scout, a 2018 Hinckley Talaria 43. “We’re both making something that’s original and timeless, engineered to endure, and, of course, high performing.”
A passionate sailor since he was a child, Massie dreamt of owning a Hinckley Bermuda 40 sailboat. Eventually, he chose a Talaria 43 because he and his family could entertain on it, overnight on it, and “turn it into an open-air express yacht at the touch of a button,” Massie says. “I love running it up from Deltaville on the Chesapeake Bay to Nantucket. It’s so easy to single hand, and with a fast cruising speed, it’s highly capable of getting around the weather.”
A craftsman himself, Massie values Hinckley Yachts’ attention to detail and exceptional technology, pointing out the retractable Sure-Shade sun awning that “can cover pretty much the whole cockpit,”he notes.
As for McKinnon and Harris, the furniture was first built from steel, but it eventually began to corrode in coastal regions. So the company shifted to solid aluminum and developed an innovative process to bend, shape, weld, and fuse it. In what Massie describes as an “unequivocal pursuit of excellence” and an “obsession with longevity,” he and his team, in 2018, implemented Bonderite EC2, a revolutionary coating technology that’s impenetrable to corrosion. Each piece is submerged in a titanium solution and charged with two megawatts of electricity that fuses an even coating of titanium to the aluminum.
“We’re the only furniture company in the world that uses this sort of coating,” says Massie. “It’s used on yachts and things immersed in saltwater.”
“There are so many parallels in our legacy of craftsmanship.” – WILL MASSIE
Next comes the pretty stuff. The client has a choice of 25 custom colors for the frames, and hundreds of luxury fabrics and leathers for the upholstery, including a McKinnon and Harris line of performance fabrics crafted by a third-generation mill in northern Italy.
With discerning pieces designed to be passed down through generations, there’s a noted synergy between McKinnon and Harris and Hinckley Yachts. Thus it makes perfect sense that the furniture maker has created a custom boating line. The foldable silhouettes (chair, stool, and table) are crafted with mechanically controlled scissor hinges and custom marine-grade stainless steel carriage bolts, resulting in McKinnon and Harris’ most ambitious designs to date. Named Scout, the yachting collection pays tribute to Massie’s own Hinckley — as well as his father’s old Gordon Setter who, says Massie, always chose the most comfortable seat.
This Fall, learn more about McKinnon and Harris when you visit us at the shows in Newport, RI and Annapolis, MD in our boat show displays beautifully outfitted with McKinnon and Harris furniture.
