Best of Britannia West 2016 →

We are excited to announce that we will be exhibiting at this year's Best of Britannia West on 5th and 6th November. Set in the beautiful St George's concert hall just off Park Street, the event showcases some of the hottest homegrown talent from Bristol and the surrounding Westcountry area.

We are in good company with plenty of talented woodworkers/furniture designers involved, as well as many other exciting emerging and established British brands.

For tickets/details follow the link by clicking on the title of this post, we'd love to see you there!

English oak vinyl storage cabinet

Burke & Marshall are pleased to report that we have just completed this stunning 12 drawer vinyl storage cabinet. Designed for a private client with a penchant for the vinyl, this is the first of two cabinets capable of housing and displaying around 1500 records.

Our client already had a good idea of how he wanted the cabinets to look, and we worked together with him to create a comprehensive brief centred around this. He wanted the records to face forwards instead of the more common sideways orientation, and for the front record to be largely visible and on show. From here it was clear that the vinyl should take centre stage and that the detailing on the cabinet should be subtle. Based on this, as well as his existing colour palate and furniture, we settled on English oak with white sycamore drawers and detailing.

We sourced and handpicked some huge 5 metre boards of English oak from the lovely folk at Vasterns timber and used this to wrap the sides and top so that the grain flows continuously up and around the whole piece. We added a thin string of sycamore around the front edges and down the middle of each vertical divider. The horizontal dividers are hidden behind the drawer fronts, which are each cut from consecutive pieces of 3 boards of beautifully figured English oak. We added a mitre on each side of the drawer fronts and fit the drawers to close so that only the sycamore stringing remains visible in the dividers.

Now happily installed in it's new home and already chock full of vinyl, we're looking forward to starting the second set of shelves and record console in the new year!

Celebration of Craftsmanship and Design leaflet released →

Burke & Marhsall is happy to reveal that an image of the first edition of our "Hugo" cocktail cabinet is featured on the front cover of the leaflet for this year's Celebration of Craftsmanship and Design exhibition, running from 20th-29th of August at Thirlstaine Long gallery in Cheltenham. This piece is the first of a limited run of just 20, designed and made by us as part of our studio furniture collection. We are delighted to see it featured in the promotion of an event showcasing the work of so many talented craftspeople. Many thanks to the wonderful folk at zzzone studios for the fantastic images!

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With just two months to go before the show things are really heating up in our workshop. If you would like to come and see some of our furniture in person or have a chat about a special project you may have in mind then please come see us, we will be there both weekends and would love to say hello. Tickets are available through the website, for more information follow the link by clicking on the title at the top of the page.

New designs installed!

Our latest designs have recently been installed in their new home in London. The brief called for a coffee table in walnut and some large dining benches in ash. The client enjoys a modern, unfussy aesthetic and wanted his new furniture to reflect this. The design we settled on for the coffee table employs a technique we often use whereby we join the top and sides out of consecutive boards, so that when they are assembled the table looks as if it is "wrapped around" out of one piece of wood.

We built a small plinth underneath the table so that it appears to float an inch off the floor. There is also a divider on the leftt hand side of the picture above which employs a panel of black fenix ntm. This enables TV or DVD remotes to be stored under the table and out of sight from the front. For anyone who hasn't seen or used this product before fenix is a fantastic laminate material, it's soft to the touch, doesn't fingerprint and absorbs most light. Note how "matte" it looks in the photo below, in a situation where most man made laminates would appear shiny. We were very impressed and can't wait to experiment more with this high quality material on future projects.

The benches are crafted in solid ash and are 2 metres long. In keeping with the clean lined look of the property the client did not want extra legs supporting the benches in the middle and also did not wish for us to use stretcher rails to tie the bench's legs together and stop them from splaying out when it is sat on. Instead we ran lengths of steel across the length of the bench under the top to reinforce the wooden rails and used braces in each corner to help make the legs behave themselves! The tops look beautiful and simple in a white oil.

Here's an image of the benches installed with the client's existing dining table.