Kitchen Essential

It was important though not to lose sight of the kitchen’s primary purpose. I have long disliked the placing of a hob or stove in a row of base units because it detracts from the symbolic significance and historical roots of the hearth. This partly explains the popularity of an Aga or giant solid- fuel stove comfortably placed inside a chimney breast. The stove is the focal point of any kitchen and wherever possible this should continue. Many families want to use a variety of built-in appliances, a composite stove was designed for the collection. This enabled the cooking appliances including an overhead canopy (containing an extractor) to be houses independently in one substantial piece of furniture, a little akin to the old ranges in Victorian kitchens. The stove could have its dignity back.

In the detailing and style of the furniture I tried to bridge the gap between old and new. Modern design often lacks detail and character. Traditional design lacks practicality and can be overbearing. Copiers of traditional furniture often adapt it poorly and because they cannot by implication add anything new, have to be looking backwards. So I attempted to design furniture with subtle but diverse references to past periods, never connecting up to any one too conspicuously. It gives the furniture an independence and charm. By including twentieth-century influences within the scope of the design an understated modernity is implied, orientating the furniture towards the future and with it a sense of optimism.

Several new types of furniture evolved. The court cupboard was inspired by the two-tiered cupboards in the Elizabethan period. The term court cupboard was derived from the French court meaning short, but with two or three tiers of ‘cup boards’. The court cupboard sits on a plinth that doubles as a seat for those informal moments when a visitor to the kitchen wishes to perch, and a step on which to stand for easy access to the shelves at the top of the cupboard. The step has some capacious drawers incorporated and is not too deep to stop one from reaching to the back of the main cupboard. A built-in refrigerator can be accommodated in this tier. High rooms present a problem for factory-made kitchen cabinets; most are made in only two or three heights. Without at least some tall pieces the furniture appears out of scale, overpowered by the architecture. The court cupboard with an optional add-on top cupboard makes a height of around 9 ft (2.75 metres) and befits the grandest of rooms.

Another option as far as cupboards go was the giant walk-in larder with storage shelves incorporated in the doors, borrowing from the American tradition of large practical cupboards. So instead of having to create a larder as a separate room, this was developed as an alternative. It has granite or slate shelves and willow vegetable basket-drawers.

The parlour cupboard was a response to that last bit of residual space when the main part of a kitchen has been designed. The table is usually left to last and required to be as big as possible. What is needed next to it is a cupboard for breakfast material, crockery, napkins and so on. The parlour cupboard answers the need. It is narrow and wall-mounted so that a chair can be pushed back underneath it to enable one to move easily from a table that can be a little bigger through not having a floor-to-ceiling cupboard behind it.

The number of free-standing pieces of furniture in the collection made up a total of 46, which if you include the different sizes, was increased to about 170 pieces. Other variations including finishes and types of door brought the total nearer 1700. This gives an indication of the variety of choice that was possible within the collection.

For a long time before I started on this project, my ideas were being tried out on my private kitchen commissions. I designed a wide range of furniture, or adapted many new pieces of furniture for the new ’sociable’ kitchen. They include a working table which is an up-graded kitchen table with a waste chute drawer; an end-grain chopping area; a granite worktop; towel rails; a storage platform and storage drawers; a series of chopping blocks with end-grain tops, some with low-level worktops; splashbacks; adjustable shelves; pull-out trays; waste chute and utensil drawers; central hanging racks in ash and stainless steel, some arched, some flat for low- ceilinged rooms; plate racks in various heights and widths; pastry dressers, one for corner use; apothecary drawers; monk’s lockers for tall pans, crockery, dry and record storage; banquettes; desks, tables; chairs; wall flaps; pot stands; telephone tables and tallboys with willow baskets. With this huge armoury of individual pieces of furniture it was possible to furnish the room in the same way that other sociable rooms — the sitting room, library and bedroom — are treated which is how kitchens used to look before the factory-produced variety arrived.

This more relaxed approach results in a kitchen that is better suited to Anglo-Saxon attitudes where interiors have battered old favourites, worn- out sofa covers and Persian rugs next to brand-new furniture and inherited bric-a-brac. Life becomes a little more comfortable and the atmosphere easy-going. It can reflect the personality of the owners and avoid being over-designed. That in my opinion is a civilized kitchen.

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