Furniture & joinery
Kent
Studio Beom is a furniture and joinery studio in Kent, making commissioned pieces in solid, regionally grown timber. Tables with the heft of architecture, cabinetry that settles into the fabric of a house, and the quieter details that make a room feel resolved. Concrete and blackened steel appear only where the timber asks for them.
Commission a piece
01 / Work
A body of studies setting out the language of the studio: solid timber, joinery left on show, and proportions taken from architecture more than from catalogues. For now they are renders. Photographs of finished commissions will replace them as the work leaves the workshop.
Oak darkened in ammonia fumes, a method far older than stain, so the colour runs through the wood instead of resting on its surface. Reeded doors open from the edge without handles, and the whole piece stands on a plinth of cast concrete.
Shelving and cupboards scribed into an alcove from wall to wall, in pale ash that holds the light. A channel beneath the lowest shelf is wired from behind, so the fitting disappears and only its glow remains.
A table descended from the long halls. Oak boards rest on splayed trestles, and the stretcher is driven through each leg and locked with tapered wedges. The frame holds without glue; it knocks down to move house and tightens again under a mallet, while forged iron straps take the knocks of a working life.
Dining tables, benches, cabinets and seating. Pieces with enough presence to anchor a room, and the constitution to move house with you.
Alcoves, wardrobes, libraries and the awkward space beneath a stair, scribed to walls that were never quite true.
The small architectural moments that resolve a room: a window seat, a run of panelling, a counter, a planter set into the wall.
02 / Approach
Timber comes first, and from as close to the workshop as it can be found. Concrete, steel and glass are admitted sparingly, where they give a piece something the wood cannot.
Oak, ash, sweet chestnut and other native hardwoods, bought from Kent and South East sawmills wherever possible. Solid wood wherever a hand will rest.
Cast bases, tops and planters. Cool, heavy and indifferent to time, it gathers a patina that only improves it.
Frames, rails and brackets, drawn as fine as the load will allow and finished dark.
For looking into a cabinet, or borrowing light from the room beyond.
Planters conceived with the piece from the first drawing, lined and drained so living things and timber can share a room.
Recesses and channels for lighting and sockets are resolved in the drawings. A qualified electrician makes the connections.
Sourcing
Timber grown in Kent makes a short journey to the workshop, and I can usually tell you where it stood.
Oil and wax in place of solvent lacquers. They age with grace and can be renewed by hand.
Offcuts are made into the trays, boards and planters in the shop, so good timber is never wasted.
Everything is built to be refinished in twenty years and handed on after that.
Photographs, rough measurements and whatever you have gathered that feels right, however loosely.
Sketches, material options and an indication of cost. We keep drawing until the piece is resolved.
Made in the workshop in Kent, with photographs following the piece as it takes shape.
Delivered and fitted by the maker, scribed to floors and walls that are never quite straight.
03 / About
The best furniture looks as though the room was built around it.
So the work begins with the room: its proportions, the fall of light across a day, the way the people in it actually live. Only then does the piece take shape, from what it must do to the timber that suits it and the way it should meet the floor and the wall. Every commission is drawn once, for one place.
The studio is in Kent, and most of its timber grows within a short drive of the bench. What remains after a commission becomes the smaller pieces in the shop.
04 / Enquire
Begin with a few lines and a photograph or two. Drawings aren't needed, and neither is certainty. The first conversation exists to find the shape of the thing.
Preview only. This form isn't connected yet. Nothing you type or attach is sent or stored, and any images you add stay in your browser.