Decor 6
Tree Couture is an exciting young British Furniture House, fronted by talented and innovative female furniture designermaker Troo Heath-Crew. Together with a small team of exceptionally talented cabinet-makes, she produces small and exclusive artisan collections for discerning clients across the world, all from their vibrant London atelier.
Troo’s vision when starting her business was to cater to a gaping chasm in the market for individual pieces of exceptionally high-quality creation and design, preferring in this age of homogeneity to create handcrafted pieces that are personal and very special limited-editions, for her ever-expanding clientele.
All pieces are individually numbered, branded (with a beautiful, discreet inlaid maker’s mark) and made in strictly limited numbers.
Tree Couture celebrates all the fine, intricate and meticulous detailing and solidity of fine antiques but with a contemporary sensibility and a positively modern attitude. The result is a series of stunningly beautiful and yet highly practical pieces that fit in effortlessly with our 21st century lifestyles. Designs are frequently inspired by furniture pieces that have fallen out of use, such as jewellery cabinets (armoires), dressing screens and cheval mirrors, and are reinvented and celebrated with a highly distinctive contemporary styling.
ATELIER
Hidden away in a vibey little historical mews in North London, once home to an old dairy, nestles Tree Couture’s Atelier and Design Studio. By infusing light and love into what was a dark, abandoned and derelict workshop, we have created a warm, vibrant and inspirational space which lies at the heart of every one of our furniture creations.
From the germination of the initial seed of a design, its drawing up, prototyping and testing, right through all the hundreds of wide-ranging processes in the making of a piece of solid hardwood furniture, Tree Couture’s unique and charming atelier is a creative hub and a constant hive of activity. The ‘mill’, our main workshop area, accommodates a host of glorious woodworking machines – our ‘Iron Maidens’ (or simply just our ‘Girls’) – each of which has a highly specific role to play in the conversion of timber - from rough-sawn planks, to perfectly flat, smooth, dimensioned components on which to carry out the intricate handwork. From band saw, rip saw, cross-cut saw, dimension saw, to planer, thicknesser, spindle moulder, drill press, sander and linisher, each of our maidens helps us to cut, shape, surface, edge, drill and sand our hand-selected planks of sustainable hardwoods in the first part of their journey towards becoming a beautiful piece of furniture.
The work we do here in this large brick vault of a room with its cathedralesque roof and its countless metres of industrial ducting is quite heavy-duty and not for the faint-hearted or flimsy-muscled! It’s noisy, and rather dusty and, given all the perfectly honed and sharpened saw blades, knives, belts and cutters, is not without its dangers, but it’s also exhilarating and utterly rewarding to be able to transform rough, twisted, dusty planks into smooth, elegant and clean precision-cut wood components.
Our bench studio is a much calmer place, bright and white and flooded with sunshine in the summer months. It is here we carry out all our handcrafting. Benchwork effectively involves everything that is carried out using small portable power tools or hand-tools. Whether it’s the precision-cutting of joints, chiselling out of recesses for hinges, locks and escutcheons, inlaying of contrasting wood or fine metals
or the painstaking application of fine leather-work, our handmade workbenches never have a dull moment.
“I do believe that when you’re passionate about certain things, the essence of these things sinks into your psyche and settles into deep recesses of your creative being”
Despite the huge amounts of hard work we do at the Tree Couture atelier, there is a lot of joy in our little space, and we feel confident that this joy distils down into each of our furniture pieces which then hopefully in turns flows on into the lives of their owners that welcome them into their homes!
For more information visit: www.treecouture.co.uk