Solid Wood & Finishes

Solid Oak: Sourced and selected from carefully forested areas of Europe, to provide a pale and subtly selected grain, as opposed to lower grades which allow great fluctuation in colour and a more “rural” appearance. Oak is both strong and subtle when sourced in this way, and allows furniture to be made in our palest as well as our warmer finishes.

I would say that Solid Oak is my favourite timber and allows furniture to be made and styled to our highest standards. From the mighty Oak tree we can make Solid Oak dining and kitchen tables up to 400cm long and its appearance suits both fine and our thicker sections. Oak holds its colour very well with age, darkening by approx 3 to 5% dependant on the wood finish used.

Solid Walnut: A rich dark sensuous timber which looks magnificent in any setting. We produce furniture in either "classic walnut" (darker and more uniform in appearance) or "wild walnut" (a combination of pale sapwood from the young tree with the rich chocolaty colours of the mature heartwood). Walnut should ideally be polished in our "strawood" polish to fully bring out the lustre of the wood grain. Allow for the wood colour to mature and deepen by about 15 to 20% when compared to freshly completed furniture. Solid "Wild" Walnut is about 28% more than Solid Oak and when "Classically" selected about 32% more than Oak. Expensive I know but lovely!

Solid Maple: We work very carefully with Maple to provide as “pale” a wood as possible, in principle free from the browns that you often see in lower grades of Maple. Its paleness allows for architectural lines to be designed, with furniture floating in its light colouration. Solid Maple is a beautiful timber to combine with other woods. Table and Cabinet lengths of up to 340cm are possible with Maple. Maple in Sandwood oil remains incredibly white and matt, but when oiled with Strawood, allows more warm to develop with a change of approx 5 to 8%. Solid Maple is about 18% more than the price of Solid Oak.

Solid American Cherry: A beautiful timber that starts life as a pale timber with hints of green and then matures to the warm Cherry tones that we all know. Cherry wood is not as dense as the other hardwoods that we work in but is a truly beautiful wood and can be finished in all of our polishes, achieving excellent results. Cherry can be used in work up to 320cm in length, and shows quite a high degree of figure within the grain, especially as the solid wood matures. The only cautionary note it to be sure to not keep ornaments on your new furniture for a fixed period of time, as it can result in "shadowing" underneath fruit bowls etc, due to an uneven distribution of light. Solid Cherry is approximately 22% more expensive than Oak.

The polishes that we use

When you visit our barn Showroom you will see all the furniture in its “pure” unpolished state allowing you to choose which specific finish you prefer to give you the look and feel that you like.

We can polish most timbers to any colour you like but we prefer to work with the wood finishes we have specially developed in-house, which have been rigorously tested on our ever-changing kitchen table .

We strongly believe that a finish should always allow you to “feel” the wood and we spend hours hand sanding and hand polishing in our workshop to achieve this result. Each piece is sanded and polished 3 times over 3 consecutive days to achieve the smoothest possible finish.

Our recommended repolishing times reflect a typical table use in a family kitchen being used everyday.
The weaker finishes are not really recommended for this sort of use but can be lovely on sideboards, bookcases etc