Bringing daydreams to life

Have you ever been daydreaming, reading a book or even rushing around when a great idea suddenly hits you? It often happens when you least expect it, and many of us simply put the ideas to the back of our minds in the vague hope that they will happen one day. But it’s much more exciting to grab them with both hands and bring them to life. That’s what our clients do when they commission bespoke furniture from 1718. We begin with your idea and our imagination, as our design team translates the possibilities into sketches. Your daydream springs into reality as the stroke of the pencil shades and darkens and it’s exciting for us too – we love to help make those ideas happen.

And while we celebrate and practise the great traditions of artisan furniture making, technology increasingly plays a part in helping our clients see what we can do. For instance, 3D printers now enable us to bring the design to life in a three-dimensional form that you can touch, feeling the curves and angles, and seeing how any moving parts work.

Jane’s Challenge

This is truly bespoke furniture – made to a unique design to fit your home. One client whose ideas we love helping to bring to life is Jane Klinge. Jane, who lives in Scotland, had been spending months trying to find the right unit for her period home. I love period properties for their history, their unconformity, their misshaped walls, nooks and strange, intriguing spaces. But when you try and place off-the-shelf furniture into a room that is anything but uniform, it rarely looks right.

Before discussing Jane’s ideas, we looked at the space and the measurements. It wasn’t long before she began to see that, with bespoke furniture, those lovable misshaped walls were no longer a problem. Indeed, the opposite was true. Those unique characteristics became the creative spark that each timbered angle and curve would sympathetically embrace.

We were all excited, and conversation flowed as we conjured up inspiration together. We drew up sketches and, before we knew it, we were presenting Jane with options of timber shades, grain styles and finishes. Her period property with awkward angles had evolved from a challenge to an inspiration.

It then came down to the magical talents at play in our workshop – in reality, a mixture of art and science. Our craftsmen invest huge talent, care and love into our clients’ bespoke furniture, proud to be bringing their ideas to life. As well as working by hand with a wide range of selected timbers, we can include leather, vellum, shagreen, glass and metalwork. Our brilliant team can also create exquisite features such as inlays, straw marquetry, gilding and verre églomisé.

So if you’re thinking about furniture, and one of those ideas suddenly comes out of nowhere, we’d love to help you make it happen.