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Georgian covers Georgian-style dresser bases and bookcases. It is the range to look at when the room is symmetrical and well proportioned and the furniture needs to agree with it.
Georgian architecture is about restraint and proportion rather than ornament, and the furniture follows. There is moulding, but it is there to divide the piece rather than to decorate it. The interest comes from the shape of the whole thing and from the timber.
The range takes the painted base with a timber top particularly well: the carcass painted, the top left as pippy or standard oak. It is the same treatment used on Pendleton tables. The paint quietens the mass of the piece and the oak top gives the eye something to rest on.
Every piece is made to order in our Suffolk workshop, to your dimensions, in one of the four standard timbers and in the finish you choose. Nothing is held in stock.
What the range covers
| Piece | Notes |
|---|---|
| Georgian-style dresser base | Used as a base, a sideboard or a server |
| Georgian-style bookcase | Open or with drawers below |
Related type pages: dresser bases, dressers, sideboards and servers, bookcases and office and study furniture.
Georgian is known for the dresser base and the bookcase, but the range is not limited to them. A glazed bookcase, a chest of drawers, a cupboard, anything else the room needs — all of it can be made bespoke in the same language, drawn first and made to match.
Timbers
Georgian is priced in the four standard timbers: oak, cherry, mahogany and walnut.
Mahogany is the most obviously correct choice for a Georgian piece and the most formal of the four. Oak gives a plainer, more English country result, particularly with a painted base. Cherry darkens over the years, and walnut carries the strongest figure.
If the base is painted, the top is where the timber decision shows. Pippy oak is available for tops in light, medium and heavy grades. Character oak, oak selected for medullary ray and clean timber with no knots at all are available on application. More on our timbers.
Make it yours
- Dimensions. Height, width and depth to the millimetre. Bookcases are usually drawn to a specific wall or chimney breast.
- Shelf spacing, set to the books you own rather than to a standard.
- Drawers below. Included, omitted, or changed in number and depth.
- Painted base or polished throughout, with the top left as oak.
- Ironmongery. Solid brass knobs, swan neck handles or turned wooden knobs.
- Finish. Polished, painted, limed, sand-blasted, rub-through paint or natural, and colour matched to a sample you send us.
Georgian proportions transfer readily onto fitted work, so a run of bookcases or an alcove cupboard can match a freestanding piece. Read how commissioning works.
Order free timber and finish samples so you can hold a pippy oak sample against your paint colour before deciding.
Questions about Georgian
Can a Georgian bookcase be made to fit an alcove exactly?
Yes, and that is the usual reason people commission one. Give us the alcove dimensions, including any variation from top to bottom, and we will scribe the piece to the wall so it sits in without packing.
What is pippy oak, and why use it on a painted base?
Pippy oak is oak with clusters of small knots and burr figure running through it. Set against a plain painted carcass it gives the piece one area of real interest rather than several competing ones.
Is Georgian a drawing room piece or a kitchen piece?
Both, depending on how you specify it. In mahogany, polished, it reads as a drawing room piece. In oak with a painted base, it sits comfortably in a kitchen.
