Selected commissions

Below are a handful of commissions from the past two years. Each tells the story of a brief, the conversations that shaped it, and the finished piece in situ. Client names are used with permission; photographs taken after delivery.

The Highgate reading room — a three-seat sofa and matching footstool

The brief was a sofa deep enough for genuine reading (75 cm seat depth), wide enough for three adults but not so large that it dominated a modestly sized room in a Victorian terrace. The client had a strong preference for a low arm height and a high, supportive back — a combination that required careful proportion work in sketch stage.

We settled on a frame width of 228 cm, with arms dropped to 52 cm and a back at 88 cm. The upholstery was a mid-weight boucle from a Scottish mill in a warm oatmeal tone. The footstool echoed the sofa's proportions: low, broad, deep-cushioned, intended as much for sitting as resting feet.

Build time was eight weeks from deposit to delivery. The client later noted that the depth of the seat changed how the room was used — it became the room where people settle, rather than the room people pass through.

The Bermondsey apartment — a set of six dining chairs

A new-build apartment in Bermondsey with an open-plan kitchen-dining space and a large walnut dining table already in place. The client wanted chairs that would sit comfortably with the table's dark grain without matching it too literally. The brief emphasised comfort over formality — these were chairs for long dinners, not for show.

We designed a frame in solid ash, left unstained to provide contrast against the walnut table. The seat and lower back were upholstered in a charcoal wool-linen blend. The frame shape was deliberately simple: a gentle curve on the back rail, legs slightly tapered, nothing that would compete with the table's heavier presence.

The set was built over six weeks. At the client's request, we added a seventh chair in the same design but slightly wider — their "host chair" at the head of the table.

The Dulwich bedroom — an upholstered king bed and foot-of-bed bench

The room was large but with a low ceiling, which made headboard height critical. Too tall and the piece would feel as though it was pressing against the ceiling; too short and it would lose presence in the space. We worked through three headboard heights in sketch before settling on 112 cm — enough to lean against comfortably for reading, but well below the ceiling line.

The headboard was upholstered in a deep olive linen with a single horizontal channel detail at head height. The frame was a standard sprung-slat base in beech. The bench at the foot of the bed was low (42 cm seat height), narrow (35 cm depth), and upholstered in the same olive linen. It was built to take the weight of a person sitting to put on shoes, and to provide a visual full stop at the end of the bed.

Total build: nine weeks for both pieces, delivered together.

The Islington study — a statement wing chair

A home office in a converted coach house. The client worked from the room daily and wanted something that read as a proper piece of furniture rather than an office chair — something to sit in for phone calls, thinking, and the occasional hour of reading between meetings. The wing chair was the answer: high back, deep seat, ears that create a sense of enclosure without blocking peripheral light.

The frame was traditional (beech, dowelled and glued, with a sprung seat) and the upholstery was a heavyweight tweed from a Yorkshire mill. The wings were set at a slightly wider angle than classical convention to accommodate a broader shoulder and to let more light through from the window behind. Build time was six weeks.

The Richmond chaise longue — a reading piece, not a display piece

Most chaise longues are built for how they look in a room. This one was built for how it felt to spend two hours reading on a Sunday afternoon. The brief was explicit: deeper cushioning than usual, a softer back angle, and a raised end that could double as a headrest. The client described it as "a sofa for one person, taken seriously."

The result was a modernist shape — no rolled ends, no button tufting — with a back angle of about 110 degrees and a seat depth of 68 cm. The cushion fill was a layered combination of HR foam and wrapped feather for the surface give without the sag. Total length was 190 cm. The fabric was a soft grey brushed cotton. Build time was ten weeks, slightly longer than standard because of the feather-wrap process.

What these commissions have in common

In each case the starting point was a real room and a real person's way of using it. The finished piece was designed backwards from the use — how deep, how wide, how high, how soft — rather than forwards from an aesthetic idea applied universally. That is what bespoke means here: the piece is shaped by the room it lives in, not by a catalogue.

If you have a piece in mind, begin with an email. A sentence or two about the room and what you need is enough for a first conversation.