Most studios draw a chair and then go looking for someone to make it. We do it the other way round. The workshop sits close enough that a drawing can be carried down, argued over, and come back changed before lunch — and that short walk is the single biggest reason our detailing looks the way it does.
A joiner will tell you in thirty seconds what a three-week tender cannot: that the radius is too tight for the veneer, that the brass foot will loosen in a year, that the grain wants to run the other way. We would rather hear it early, while the line is still cheap to move.
Prototypes before promises
Every piece we specify for a client exists first as a rough in ply — full size, sat on, leaned against, measured with a hand rather than a scale rule. It is an unglamorous stage and we have learnt not to skip it. Comfort is not a number you can colour in on a plan.
If we cannot make it ourselves, we have not finished designing it.
The commercial argument is simpler still. When the maker and the designer share a roof, nobody is protecting a margin by quietly substituting a material. What is drawn is what is delivered, and we can say so with a straight face.