The Reeve & Co Group

How they are made. Everything is set out full size before anything is machined. It is a slow way to start and it removes most of the arguments later, because the client and the designer have seen the real proportions rather than a render. Carcasses and frames are cut and jointed in the workshop, hand-painted in our own finishing shop, dry-assembled and signed off before they are loaded, then fitted by the people who made them. Nothing is bought in as a flat pack and nothing is handed to a sub-contract fitter.

What it does best. In-frame and hand-painted kitchens for period houses, listed buildings and lateral conversions, where nothing is square and nothing standard will fit; and quieter contemporary work for architects who want cabinetry that behaves like furniture. Sculleries, pantries, boot rooms and utility rooms are usually part of the same commission. Worktops in stone, timber or composite are specified and coordinated with the cabinetry rather than left to a separate supplier.

What it costs. Square & True publishes its prices, which is unusual in this trade. A kitchen typically runs from around £45,000 to £62,000 plus VAT and upwards depending on the size of the room, the materials and how much of the house is involved. They will tell you early if the budget and the brief do not meet.

Why it matters here. If you are already commissioning joinery from Reeve & Co, the kitchen does not need to come from anywhere else, and it will match — same timber, same paint, same hands. If you came looking for a kitchen first, Square & True is the front door.

The collections. Ten named ranges give the work a starting point rather than a limit: Denbigh, Oakamoor, Pendleton, Ruthin, Montgomeryshire, Rowton, Windrush, Gothic, Coach House and Georgian. A customer picks the range that suits the room, then changes the length, the height, the timber or the detail until it fits. Most orders end up somewhere between a catalogue piece and a bespoke one, which is precisely the point.

Matching what is already there. A good deal of Bryn Hall’s work is making something to sit beside furniture a family already owns — a second dresser for a longer wall, a table to match inherited chairs, a wardrobe in the same mahogany as a Victorian original. This is difficult work. It needs the timber selected for grain and colour, the mouldings copied properly, and the polish matched by eye rather than by code, and it is the kind of thing a factory cannot do at all.

Where it fits alongside the joinery. Fitted joinery and freestanding furniture are different crafts that happen to share a workshop. On a whole-house project the fitted work — the panelling, the wardrobes, the library — comes from Reeve & Co, and the loose pieces that furnish the finished rooms can come from Bryn Hall, in the same timbers and the same finishes. Clients who want one and not the other are equally welcome; the two do not have to be bought together.

How to start. Bryn Hall publishes a catalogue and will send timber samples free of charge, which is the sensible way to choose a finish. Workshop visits are by appointment.

The established Reeve & Co gun-cabinet pages remain live. New sporting commissions sit with Sporting Cabinetmakers.

We mention it because a period house that wants a hand-painted kitchen usually wants a bathroom in the same language, and because the joinery in a bathroom — a panelled bath surround, a vanity in solid timber, cupboards in an awkward eaves space — is made in this workshop anyway. They quote and contract separately from us.