Bedroom Design

Designing your bedroom should be the most exciting project in your house but it is usually left until last as it is the hardest room to design. Do you want it zen, cosy, eclectic or chic? It is where you can put more of your personality as it is a room just for yourself, which very few people will see.

There are key elements you need to consider when designing your bedroom, what type of bed you want - wooden or fabric frame and headboard (always fabric for us!), and do you want paint or paper on the walls?

We tend to start with the headboard and move out from there, it can create such an impact and as the bed is the focus point of any bedroom it seems remiss not to make it the star of the show. Much like when we created our own bedroom collection, the headboard was the starting point and then we moved from there. Bedside tables are hard to come by, the trend at the moment tends towards larger pieces which is great if you have a lovely Georgian town or country house, less so a Victorian terrace! So we created our scalloped bedside table with the smaller bedroom in mind, with the secret tea tray creating extra room when needed. As with all our furniture it is made to order so can be resized for the larger bedroom.

Lastly a chair - something pretty and small which can be used for a dressing table (or probably more commonly a dumping ground!) or even a relaxed reading spot.

Our latest design project saw us decorating the below bedroom. The client had the bedroom fabric from a Christopher Farr sale some years back, as well as the blanket on the bed so we used Edward Bulmer’s Cuisse de Nymphe on the walls, had the lamps made bespoke and then made sure to highlight the green and blue on the headboard with Jane Churhill’s Tassi fabric for the relaxed blind at the window. As the room is quite small our scalloped bedside table made the perfect addition.

When designing any room we always try and mix old with new, so here we have an antique Afghani rug, antique chest of drawers, vintage recovered Parker Knole chair (great for bedrooms as while being compact they remain very comfortable) with Pooky lights and shades and a suzani found on etsy.

Below is both the scheme and the finished article.

History of Turned Furniture

In the late 16th and early 17th Century the turned chair was in vogue in England, Holland and New England. Made with chisels and gouges cutting onto a wooden spindle on a laithe, they created designs such as the bobbin you see on our furniture.

While bobbin furniture dropped in popularity in the 17th Century, it then became sought-after once more in the 19th Century thanks to Jenny Lind, a Swedish opera singer, who went on tour in America with her entire collection of turned furniture.

The country cottage style of spool turned furniture she toured with became so popular in the USA it is known to this day as ‘Jenny Lind Furniture’.

We now like to envisage Jenny resplendent on our bobbin chair, feet up on the ottoman, with a glass of champagne on the side table relaxing after a concert on her American tour.

How We Design Our Collections

I recently read a quote from the interior designer, Beata Heuman, that she decides on a piece for her home when she knows she can’t not have it. I think our designing process is a little like that.

We find antique furniture, which may not be quite the right dimensions, or in the case of our upcoming second collection, we miss out on it at auction, and we create it for ourselves, making antique designs of today.

Now I know a lot of people don’t like having/ antiques in their house, but it is nothing to do with the design, they simple don’t like having old things in their new homes. I personally love the old things, filled with stories of past lives told through coffee and wine stains, knicks on legs and tears in upholstery. To me it brings the very design to life.

Each collection is designed around a specific style, the first of which is Bobbin Furniture. As you may have noticed, the turned leg style has been having a renaissance of late. We chose each piece from a chair we have, a side table we’ve lusted after and an ottoman we made for a friend as part of an interior design project and knew we had to keep making. Each piece is different to the tiered side tables, shelves and dining chairs you see in other shops. We wanted a chair you could comfortably sit on whilst knowing you would look beautiful doing it!

Thanks to 7 years working in the furniture industry I was lucky to know so amazing craftsman so that each piece of furniture is hand made, using traditional techinques. Our furniture is made with solid wood frames meaning that one day these will be the antiques you leave to you children or children’s children - they will last that long!