Anyone comparing bespoke joinery workshops will notice that some have enormous portfolios and some have surprisingly thin ones. It is worth understanding why, because the thin portfolio is often the one attached to the more discreet client list.
The constraint is real
Our clients’ homes are private. Most ask that they are not photographed or published, and in a good number of cases that is a term of the appointment rather than a preference expressed at the end. Some houses cannot be shown because of who lives in them. Some cannot be shown because a security specification is visible in the room. Some simply because the client would rather their drawing room were not on the internet.
We treat that as binding. It means a considerable proportion of our best work — and in gun storage, most of it — will never appear on this website.
What that means for what you see here
We would rather be plain about this than let people draw their own conclusions. Images on this site fall into two categories, and we do not blur them:
- Photography of completed work, where the client has agreed we may publish it.
- Visualisations produced from our own workshop drawings, showing designs we make, in the specifications we make them to, where the finished room itself cannot be shown.
The second category exists because the alternative — showing nothing, or quietly reusing somebody else’s photograph — is worse. A visualisation drawn from our own rod and section drawings is an honest representation of what we build. A stock photograph of a kitchen made by another firm is not, and a surprising number of joinery websites carry them.
What we will not do
We will not publish a client’s house because the photographs happen to be good. We will not put a client’s name or address to work without asking. We will not post anything from a private commission to social media, which stays real photography only. And we do not carry testimonials we could not evidence to the standard the advertising rules expect.
How to actually assess us, then
If you cannot judge a workshop by its gallery, judge it by the things that are harder to fake:
- Ask to see drawings. Full-size rods and large-scale sections tell you more about how a firm works than any photograph.
- Ask to see samples. A moulding run to profile, a polished panel, a drawer box. Construction is visible in the hand.
- Ask to visit the workshop. You can tell a great deal from a bench in ten minutes.
- Ask for references, and take them up. We can put you in touch with clients, architects and contractors who are content to speak, including some whose houses we cannot show you.
- Ask what happens when something goes wrong. Everybody has a story. The useful question is what was done about it.
Discretion cuts both ways
The same policy that keeps our portfolio thinner than it might be is the reason we are introduced to the work we are. In this part of the market, clients and their advisers talk to each other, and a firm that treats one house as marketing material will not be recommended into the next one.
So we take the slower route: fewer published projects, more work seen in person, and a reputation carried by the people who have actually used us.
Come and look
Drawings, samples and finish references for completed work can all be seen at the workshop, and we will happily arrange for you to speak to clients and architects directly. Visits to Mickfield are by appointment.
Reeve & Co Interiors designs, draws, makes and fits bespoke joinery from its workshop at Mickfield, Suffolk.