It all begins with an idea…

I was approached back in 2022 with an idea. A dining room table, with a singular base, large enough to seat 12 people. That is a pretty large one legged table, but hey, I’ll give it a go.

My client kept the brief…..well, brief, but this is one of my favourite ways of working. Having creative licence to come up with bespoke designs and finishes must be every maker’s dream?

After weeks of sketching and sampling, we agreed the general design and finishes. Now it’s down to me to create this piece, anxious was an understatement. Most pieces I make are one-offs, unique pieces of furniture, so I have to work out the construction and making process from scratch.

The main challenge was working out the stability of the table. The aged bronze top was machined from four layers of 25mm thick sheet material, with a birds-eye Maple veneered panel inlayed into the bronze and finished in a high gloss lacquer. The top finished at 3 metres long and 1.4 metres wide; a cantilevered table which has to take the added weight of table decorations and the occasional person leaning on the end! To be honest, I had no idea if it was going to be stable; but, a few basic sums recalled from my engineering days should be enough…..

Fortunately, in our world of over-engineering (something else I remembered from my past) the base was already very heavy, but I left space for about 100kg of lead ballast, just in case!

The end result was extremely pleasing and the client was thrilled with their commission. This piece became the beginning of a unique dining room set, which paved the way for 12 bespoke dining room chairs and an extremely large fitted cabinet. All of which will feature on the blog at some point soon...