01
Drawing
A piece begins as a full-size drawing on the wall. We stand in front of it for a week before anyone cuts anything. Most ideas do not survive that week.
Stillroom · Ghent · Established 2019
The north end of the workshop at four in the afternoon, when the light stops being useful.
Dok Noord 4 · Ghent
What we make
We make about ninety objects a year. Everything is made to order, in batches of four or six, and nothing is kept in stock. An order placed in March is usually delivered in June.
There are six of us, two of whom only work Thursdays and Fridays. Nobody here does one job. The person who cuts the joinery on a chair is usually the person who oils it.
We would rather make one chair properly than fifty quickly. That is not a philosophy. It is the only arrangement we have found that we can live with.
How we work
Four steps · About fourteen weeks
02
Prototyping
The first one is built in cheap pine. It gets sat in, argued about and redrawn. The Morrow Chair went through four prototypes. The third was worse than the second.
03
Making
Batches of four to six, one bench at a time. Joinery is cut by hand where it shows and by machine where it does not. Nothing is hurried to meet a date.
04
Finishing
Oil, wax, three days of drying, then a week upstairs to settle. We deliver in Belgium ourselves, in a van, and we carry it in.
Materials
Oak · Wool · Limestone · Stoneware
Oak
From two forests in the Ardennes. Felled in winter, air-dried three years.
Wool
Undyed. The colour of the fleece is the colour of the chair.
Limestone
Honed, unsealed. It will mark for about a year, then stop.
Stoneware
Thrown here, glazed with wood ash from the workshop stove.
The building
A former dock warehouse on Dok Noord, built in 1911 to hold rope and grain. The windows face north, which is the only reason we took it.
Nothing ships in January. We spend the month repairing benches, sharpening everything and drawing.
A roll of seamless paper stands in the corner by the loading door. Every object we make is photographed against it before it leaves.
Oak in the rack by the north wall, stacked and stickered, in its third winter.
The people
Six of us · Four listed
Ines Vandermolen
Founder · Drawing
Tomas Reyne
Workshop · Joinery
Hanne Lund
Clay, glaze and finishing
Joos Delmotte
Machining and delivery
Two others work Thursdays and Fridays and would rather not be on a website