Discipline

Bespoke Furniture

One-off tables, counters and seating built to a designer’s drawing.

Sculptural gold-finished centre table between tufted sofas

Furniture that exists because someone drew it.

One-off tables, counters and seating frames built to a designer’s drawing — not adapted from a catalogue.

Metal furniture is unforgiving. A table base with a visible weld is a failed table. A slender frame that flexes under a stone top is a failed frame. Both problems are solved in the same place — in how the piece is engineered before it is made.

We work from a designer’s drawing or a reference and develop it into something buildable: section sizes that carry the load without thickening the line, joints planned so the weld sits where it can be dressed invisibly, and levelling built in where floors are not flat.

Laser welding is a significant part of this. It puts very little heat into the joint, which means less distortion on a polished surface and a seam that can be finished back to nothing.

What this covers

Console, centre, coffee and side tables
Dining tables and metal table bases
Reception and bar counters
Chair, stool, bench and sofa frames
TV units, media consoles and display shelving
Planters, plant stands and garden furniture
Hotel and guest-room furniture elements
Chair bases and stool frames
Vanity units and washbasin stands

A note from the workshop

Metal furniture is judged by hand

A table or a chair frame is the only architectural metalwork people touch with their whole bodies. Edges are felt before they are seen; a sharp arris on a table apron, a weld that was dressed for the eye and not the palm, a leg that rings when it is knocked — these decide whether a piece feels made or manufactured.

So the drawings are only half the brief. Which edges are eased and by how much, where the frame meets stone or timber or glass, how the piece is levelled on a floor that is not level, and how it will be moved by cleaners who will not be careful: those are the questions a piece of furniture is really answering.

In pictures

Bespoke Furniture from the workshop

The gallery

Hand-beaten brass console table with a stone top

Cast brass side table shaped like a sectioned tree stump

Brass coffee table with a cast tree-ring surface

Cast brass centre table with an organic rippled top

Dining table on a sculpted brass base with a glass top

Polished stainless steel and marble bar counter in a fine-dining restaurant

Woven brass reception desk curving across a corporate lobby floor

Close view of a mirror-polished stainless steel table edge

Blackened steel geometric shelving on a backlit marble wall

Slender brass display shelving against a marble wall

Brass-framed dining chairs around a marble table

Metal-framed furniture in a hospitality interior

Questions about furniture

Will a metal table base mark a stone or timber floor?

Not if its feet are designed for that floor. A bare metal edge on stone will scratch it and on timber will dent it, so bases are finished with a foot — a glide, a pad, an adjustable leveller — chosen for the floor and for whether the piece will be moved. Levelling matters too: a four-legged frame on a floor that is not flat will rock until it is.

Can metal furniture be made for outdoor use?

Yes, with the metal and finish chosen for it. Brass, bronze and copper weather into themselves and suit a garden; stainless steel holds its look; mild steel needs a finish that protects every edge and is checked yearly. Fixings, feet and anywhere water can sit are the details that decide whether an outdoor piece lasts.