Professor Jenkins – Glasgow Dowanhill

We were asked by Professor Alice Jenkins to design and build two bespoke cabinets for her lounge. Her Apartment is part of a curved Victorian terrace in Dowanhill and Alice had asked that the cabinets be built to suit the curvature of the room. Her brief was that the cabinets should bring together contemporary styling whilst sitting well in a Victorian setting. We discussed the cabinets at length with Alice and Catherine and they finally decided on storage beneath and bookshelves above all with a hand painted finish.

For the cabinets we used Marine plywood to provide a very strong base for the substantial bookshelves above, the doors to the cabinets were made from Southern Yellow Pine and are all mortise and tenon jointed with the reveal detail being moulded into the stiles and rails, the doors once painted were finished with off-white porcelain handles.

For the desktop we suggested to Alice that we source and use reclaimed timber. We managed to source some reclaimed Indonesian Teak flooring which was salvaged from a Solicitors office in Edinburgh and is approximately 120 years old, we planed the flooring in the workshop to remove all the wear and heel marks and then bonded it together to form a desktop. Once complete it was finished with shellac and French polish to reveal some absolutely beautiful Red and Copper tones which contrasted well with the Jasmine White of the cabinets.

For the bookshelves we thought to keep the design simple and without any supports so adopted to use 33mm section timber, the bookshelves were framed with fluted columns around the perimeter and we fitted corbel blocks with hand carved rosettes at all four corners.

Many thanks to Alice and Catherine for their patience whilst we brought this project together in the workshop and for their sympathy as we showed our age when bringing the cabinets upstairs. Next time we will use a delivery firm!

Many thanks also to Wilson and Calderwood of Glasgow who hand painted the cabinets.