Managing our own 25 acres of Essex woodland since 1980 has powerfully influenced our furniture making, as our amateur enthusiasm transformed into professional commitment. We have put aside lifetimes in the Law and in teaching to learn the traditions of English country chair making. We use our own trees mostly oak, sweet chestnut, cherry and beech, looking elsewhere for yew, elm and ash.

We enjoy the unpredictable beauty to be found in solid English hardwoods, and many of our pieces respond to the particular quality of the timber from which they are made; our chairs will never be identical, though clearly children of the same parents. We stay in the wide range of the Enlish country tradition, partly because it is so wide, and partly because the chairs are so comfortable and comely that it would be presumptuous to imagine one could improve on them by radical alteration. Nonetheless each piece is unique.

Kathleen is one of the few women selected for inclusion on the Register of Professional Turners maintained by the Worshipful Company of Turners of London and, at the time of her selection, the only one turning on a pole lathe.

Chairs of ours have been voted “Best in Show” at the annual competitions of the Association of Pole Lathe Turners three times in the last ten years.”