“It’s a completely unique experience and way of buying something.”
Ross Ketteridge brings experience from his years of furniture making and time working in other industries.
“Something unique to Real Wood Studios is how we engage customers from the beginning. Normally, a cabinet maker would discuss a design with the customer, do some sketches, agree on what designs they like, and then go away, design it, buy the timber, and make it into the thing. The way we’re set up allows us to engage the customer with the raw materials, from the very start, such as this [pointing to huge elm planks]. “
“One customer, having already selected these elm boards, was looking around the wood store like a kid in a sweet shop, and he said, ‘What’s this? Can we include this in my table somehow?’”
Ross points to planks of spalted beech, which he is now incorporating into the table that he and the customer co-designed.
“With this customer, we had pretty much designed this table, in person, with the customer feeling the timber in his hands, before we had even drawn a sketch.”
This customer also commissioned a bespoke kitchen from Ross, who specialises in hand-built kitchens (he usually aims to make one bespoke kitchen per year). It’s just been completed.
“Seven years ago, I made this same customer a coffee table. Then one day last year, he called in to see me, ‘We’ve bought our forever home, I want the best kitchen in Scotland, and I want you to make it’. And it had to be made from Scottish Elm. That’s a lot of solid wood. We have to have enough from one tree, so that the colour and the grain of the timber are consistent across multiple doors and components. We have that ability here. Everything in this kitchen is top quality, solid hardwood – you’d be surprised how many premium kitchen suppliers still use chipboard hidden behind laminates and so forth.”
“As always, I was completely flexible with meeting the customer’s needs. Incorporating, for example, an unusually-sized range cooker, mega-deep pan drawers and a huge larder fridge that needed ventilation in the wood surround. Nothing was a problem. I can be completely bespoke, if you need a cabinet to be 913mm wide I can make it 913mm wide – I hate wasted space!”
“Everything I’ve made in the last 18 years has been unique.”
“Larger projects like that use skills from my earlier business career: marketing, project management, and customer relationships. For this kitchen, I’m working alongside other professions – the architect, electricians, plumbers, etc – and providing the customer with project management for companies connected with the kitchen such as the granite worktop specialist, the glass company lining the walls and the various appliance suppliers.”
“I really enjoy the early stages of a commission, where I’m ensuring that the customer gets exactly what they want, establishing their aesthetic and functional desires – slender, chunky, contemporary, ornate, straight lines, curves, organic shapes, specific storage needs– for the design brief. Then I ask how much creative freedom they are happy to give me. Full free reign, or do they want to guide me right down to the finest detail, like how small the bevels on the edges need to be? “
“I quite often sketch ideas and designs with a pencil and paper and gain the buy-in and excitement from the customer about what it might end up looking like. And then translate that into a perfectly detailed computer drawing. You still can’t see what it looks like until it is there in the room and there’s a lovely anticipation in that.”
“I love that aspect of my job, of literally taking slices of a tree and then delivering the finished product to the customer and seeing their reaction and feeling my satisfaction that this thing is beautiful and is going to last a very long time, like an artist taking a blank canvas and creating something exquisite, unique and everlasting.”