Bangkok's Most In-demand Designer of Bars and Clubs

The bad boy of interior designing industry, the Western Australia born Ashley Sutton has taken over the Bangkok nightlife scenes interior design by storm.

During his time working as a miner in Australia, Ashley started sketching fairies and writing stories to combat the monotony, tedium and bleakness of the dark underground mining tunnels. His artworks were discovered by a production manager who then encouraged him to publish them, which he did, into three volume series of storybooks

Later in Thailand, while sourcing and producing merchandise he created a workshop with designs and features of his vision to inspire the workers the concept. The impressively imaginative workshop very quickly attracted many visitors who started requesting for food and beverage. He soon put a kitchen and bar in the workshop.

And the rest is history.

The Iron Fairies, Bangkok

The Iron Fairies, Hong Kong

Ashley is much more than a mere designer. When you drink in an Ashley Sutton designed bar, you get the full experience. He tanned the leather we sit on. The custom-built stained glass, steel, cast-iron decor are his handiwork. The gin and tonic used in his nine varieties of Old Fashioned cocktails? Straight from his distillery in Bangkok. He bent the copper frames around the buildings, and strung up the thousands of butterflies one by one at The Iron Fairies. Mostly with one hand, as he lost half of his good hand in a crane operating accident during his mining days. The impairment didn't slow him down one bit, as today in Bangkok, Hong Kong and Tokyo, there are currently over forty Ashley Sutton creations.

Ophelia, Hong Kong

Sing Sing Theater, Bangkok

Dreadnought, Bangkok

The Bookshop, Bangkok

J. Boroski, Bangkok

Many fantastic creations for other owners later, Ashley has finally decided to create a masterpiece of his own in 2015, and the result is A R Engineers Siam, which takes Iron Balls, as the bar is later renamed to. Huge, ball-shaped, glass bottles are filled with gin distilled in his own distillery, the result of 600 recipes and 2000 runs, funded with everything Ashley ever had. And the outcome is 330ml of concentrated pure deliciousness.

We were lucky enough to catch up with the amazing Ashley Sutton over "Gin with Coconut Water" AKA "By the Balls" at A R Sutton Engineers Siam (later renamed to The Iron Balls), Bangkok.