Bespoke Service

We find that customers come to us because the like the style of furniture that we make, but would like it made to their own size requirements.

All our furniture can be made to your exact specification!

• If you have a low ceiling but want a canopy bed we can lower the overall bed height to suit you.
• If you need a dining table to fit into a long narrow room, we can decrease the table depth.

We have three standard colour finishes (natural, medium and dark) but we are more than happy to polish your furniture in a colour of your choice. This is perfect if you need your new furniture to match in with existing items in the room. We can also design furniture to blend in with existing pieces, and if this is necessary then please forward a few detailed photos to help with an accurate match.

Estimates

Most of the furniture is made to each individual's requirements; we price for pieces once we know your exact specifications.

Our four poster beds are priced to wood type and mattress size, though we are happy to alter existing designs if you fancy something different.

If you would like us to quote for a bookcase or hi-fi cabinet, for example, please provide some overall dimensions of any items needed to fit in the piece (e.g. television).

Tradition and Quality

We make very traditional looking furniture, based on antique country furniture. Stephen researches suitable designs by visiting antique shops, salesrooms, auctions, stately homes, etc and reading books. He then styles pieces so both old and new furniture can go side by side and look great together.

We make solid wood furniture (no plywood or MDF). We use both traditional techniques and modern methods to make a piece of furniture that will last a lifetime.

Realistic Pricing

• We are based in a rural area.
• We own our workshops.
• We dry our own timber (cutting out at least one middleman).
• We do not have a shop outlet.
• We avoid expensive magazine advertising.

This makes our overheads reasonable and as a result, we are able to pass this saving onto our customers.

Stephen Edwards has been brought up on a Herefordshire farm all of his life, in the beautiful, rural area on the English/Welsh border, known as The Marches. His mother and father are both from farming families, but they gave Stephen the opportunity to develop his skills in the furniture making industry, without pressure to return to the family way of life, working on the farm.

Redundant buildings have been utilised to keep overheads to a minimum, and the money saved has been ploughed straight back into the business to buy machinery and equipment, and to build up stock, of both timber and finished products.

Examples of most of the furniture can be seen if you visit the showroom, and although it may not be the size that you would like, it will give you a good indication of the things that we can make to your requirements.

The furniture is made using locally grown, sustainable timber, predominantly oak. Whole tree trunks are supplied by a local woodsman then cut into various sized planks according to the furniture that we are likely to make from them. For example, 1" timber is used in the majority of cabinet work, 2" is used to make table tops, and the 3" and 4" is used to make table legs and four poster bed posts.

A local timber contractor with a mobile planking machine, comes for several days during the year, to process the wood delivered to the workshops. The highly experienced mill operator (Ian Carmichael, owner of the company, Teme Timber,) and Stephen Edwards both inspect each log being processed, so that the maximum wood can be harvested. Great care is taken to machine the boards to gain the maximum beauty of the wood as decades of growth are revealed with each pass of the saw.

Boards are placed in a stack, with sticks between them to allow air to circulate through the boards and dry them out slowly, until they are as dry as the air flowing through them. This is known as 'air drying', and in Britain will bring the moisture content down to about 15-18%. This will not however, dry the wood sufficiently for use in furniture placed in a house, especially if it is in a dry centrally heated home. The use of a simple dehumidifying kiln will take the moisture content of the timber down to a satisfactory level, before it is used to make your final product.

Timber is placed into a kiln, which is basically an insulated box, where heat can be introduced to help the excess moisture to come to the surface of the board. Moisture can then be extracted from the air within the kiln, using a refrigeration unit and timer. Once the wood has reached the desired moisture content, about 8-10%, it can be cooled down slowly, to avoid putting stresses in the planks, and then use them to make the furniture.

Most of wood used is English oak, but we also dry smaller quantities of ash, sycamore, Douglas Fir, yew and walnut. Producing our own dried timber, allows us to keep a close eye on quality control throughout the whole process. Our craftsmen can select wood for your furniture from a comprehensive stock of timber built up over the years from local sources. Furniture made from West African mahogany, American cherry etc., also comes from sustainable forests.