17th century style carved oak dining table and chairs

We had already made a 17th century style oak four-poster bed for our Sussex clients and participated in the restoration of the beautiful all-over-the-place Tudor-period oak panelling in their dining room. So, it was a natural decision for them to commission a bespoke oak table and chairs from us.

    
Our clients first commission with us. A 17th century style oak panelled four poster bed and the Tudor oak panelling, prior to restoration. You can see the finished panelling, further down this article.

With all projects that effectively start with a blank canvas, a great deal of discussion goes on between client and furniture designer. The clients aspirations as to how many people they want to seat (both regularly and occasionally) and the overall table shape, needs to be dovetailed (or indeed tempered!) to the available size of the dining space and its shape. These are the first practical considerations and fairly common sense stuff.

From experience, we find that most clients have an idea of preferred style, although this does range from slightly hazy, to very specific. A benefit of having such a varied choice of styles on our website, means a reasonable time spent, browsing these pages, should provide more than enough inspiration. Other than that, there are numerous interior magazines available (many specializing in period and traditional interiors), as well as books on antique furniture and, of course, our help and assistance.

As it happens, it is our help and assistance and one of those very books, that formed the basis for the overall design of our clients table and chairs. 

Our client was able to choose their preferred table leg design and rail carving from furniture design details, hand drawn by our managing director, Nicholas Berry.

One of our many reference books that provided the inspiration for the chairs. 

Oak Furniture - The British Tradition, by the late Victor Chinnery, is considered the most accomplished work on this subject, of the 20th century. This is a well thumbed copy!

Now, our clients had two personal traits that they wanted incorporated into the design, helping to make the furniture individual to them. One was their surname, Flowers, and the other was their love of fine wine. We were pretty much there with the running vine carving for the table rail (flowers and grapes) and the motif on the chair backs (flowers), so it was just a little bit of a design tweak needed for the armchair cresting rails. Here we added in the leaves from the table carving and our clients initials, to complete the personalization.

Working drawings and design detail notes for the carved oak table and chairs. 

Part of the full size working drawings for the oak armchair cresting rails, drawn on CAD by Nicholas Berry.

The finished pieces are illustrated below:

Period style oak refectory table, with paired stretchers and running vine carving to side rails. Largely unseen, the end rails are simply moulded, in accordance with most original antique dining tables of this style. Pictured here in our clients restored Tudor oak panelled dining room (remember the pre-restoration photo above).

Period style carved oak side chairs, with clients bespoke made loose cushions.

Period style carved oak armchair with personalized cresting rail carving.

The completed period style dining set comprising oak carved table, six carved oak side chairs and two armchairs.

Here are the links to the relevant product pages, with full details, including sizes and prices:

Hand carved refectory dining table.
Oak Westmorland hand carved chairs.

And for another view of them in our clients room:

Carved oak dining table and chairs in Tudor panelled room.