18/04/2026
My next commission is a two-drawer chest with floating shelves, made to sit alongside a bookcase I built for the same clients a couple of years ago.
For the bookcase, we used their own English walnut — felled from their garden years ago — paired with English sycamore I sourced. We’ve now used every last piece from that log, so for this piece we needed to find timber that could hold its own next to it.
I settled on French walnut from English Woodlands Timber in Sussex. I went down to hand-select the boards myself — everything came from just two logs, which matters when you’re matching grain and colour across a piece like this.
It’ll be built mainly in solid timber, including the drawers which will run traditionally. For the drawer boxes I’m planning a contrasting timber — ash, maple or sycamore — to complement the walnut rather than compete with it. A little birch ply for some of the interior carcass, but otherwise solid throughout.
I design every piece I make, and this one I particularly enjoyed working out. Looking forward to getting into the making now.
I’ll be sharing stages of the build here, and there’ll be a full journey video covering all the major stages of construction and installation over on the channel.
