In the last two weeks we have been busy as bees from Hell, making some fine beechwood chairs for the Hell's Kitchen television programme. 78 Chairs take some doing and our pride in winning this important order is tempered by the fatigue and effort required to turn out such a perfect job. In our upholstery and polishing workshops we already turn out about 350 chairs a week, mainly bespoke to customers' own specifications for restaurants, show-houses, night-clubs, country houses and of course, furniture shops.
The star of the show is Marco Pierre White, who hosts a number of celebrities and tries to turn them into master chefs, those who fail have to be waiters. The set looks like a restaurant but it is really a sound stage and the chairs are laid out as per an upmarket restaurant.
I'm sure ITV asked us to supply these Georgian round back chairs because of the success of our previous supply of carved spoon backs for the same programme two years ago. That was the first airing of this formula and was headed up by Gordon Ramsey, a popular chap. The ones in the show this time are smooth top spoon-backs with contrasting striped fabrics by Paul Smith which harmonise with the wallpapers in the mock-up restaurant set.
In the last series we were lucky to experience a lot of spin-off from the order and subsequently these chairs were taken up by several important restaurants in London as well as a few private customers who still like the style of the spoon-backs with ca-brio legs and a carved flower at the apex.
This time we are to supply a mixture of side chairs and dining carvers to head the groups of tables. The fabric designed by Paul Smith is stripes, stripes and stripes in at least 6 variations. It is stressful work getting the fabric centred up on each chair and chair back with an uncountenanced amount of waste of a material which costs £100 a metre!
The Chair frame itself is a very strong construct. Although there is likely to be no rough-house behaviours in an establishment headed by Marco Pierre White, the chair would withstand the most abusive treatment. Each chair has a horse-shoe shaped stretcher or support bar, there are extra thick corner blocks and the wood is kiln dried to the n'th degree.
The Georgian shape is characterized by a sumptuous round back, which is routed or grooved for visual effect. The chair legs are tapered and fluted and adorned by a carved flower set in a tablet at the leg top.
The interface between the wood and the gorgeous fabric is a row of antique nail heads, tapped in by our craftsmen with a tiny hammer. We have been asked to lacquer the chairs in shiny black and very smart they look too.
If we have an opportunity to buy the chairs back from programme makers we will make them available to our clients and you may buy them in fours, sixes etc to adorn your dining rooms or entrance halls. If you would like Email notification if, as and when these limited edition babies come home, then contact us.
Any products sold on this website are sold on a first come first served basis.
In case you missed the show we have extracted a few seconds and repeated it a few times so you can see the chairs in action. Just click the play icon at the bottom left of the screen below.