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The detail that tells you what Denbigh is doing sits in the door. The panel is raised and fielded, meaning it is thicker in the middle and bevelled away at the edges so it can move within its frame, and the bevel catches light along its four sides. Move across the room and the door changes. That single piece of eighteenth-century cabinetmaking is the reason the range costs what it costs and the reason it holds a room that already has good joinery in it.
The pieces
Denbigh is drawn as a dresser and rack, in three-door and four-door forms, with a plainer version of the same thing where the rack is left unmoulded. The base is also made on its own, where it does duty as a sideboard or a server, and there is a version with a glazed bookcase top instead of an open rack, which is the form that suits a dining room more than a kitchen.
What the detailing actually consists of
Formality here is cumulative rather than dramatic. It is a list of small decisions, each of which takes time at the bench.
- Raised and fielded panels in the door fronts, bevelled at the edges
- Framed and panelled sides, so the piece is finished where it turns the corner
- Cock beading around flat drawer fronts
- Moulding below the top and above the doors, dividing the piece horizontally
- A moulded plinth with a cut-out at the bottom
- A thumbnail profile worked on the edge of the top
- Solid ironmongery, with butt hinges left on show
The exposed butt hinge is worth a sentence on its own. Concealed hinges are easier and they hide a multitude of small inaccuracies. A butt hinge on the face of the work has nowhere to go: the door has to fit its opening properly for the gap to look right, and the hinge is then part of the design rather than a piece of hardware you are meant to ignore.
The room it needs
Denbigh is the most formal thing we make, and it wants a room that can answer it. In a house with cornices, panelling or good architraves it looks like it belongs to the building. In a low, plain room it can look as though it has been brought in from somewhere else. This is the one range where we will occasionally suggest a client goes a step down in formality, because the piece will win an argument with the room rather than settle it.
Denbigh or Georgian
These two ranges get confused, and they are opposites in method. Denbigh carries panelled and moulded detail throughout: the interest is in the surface. The Georgian range works the other way, using proportion and restraint, with moulding that divides a piece rather than decorates it. If you want the eye to travel over a piece, Denbigh. If you want it to take the whole thing in at once, Georgian. Both are made from the same timbers in the same workshop; it is a decision about temperament, not quality.
What clients change
The drawings are a starting point. Height, width and depth are made to the millimetre, which on a dresser usually means the rack is set to clear a beam, a light switch or a run of wall units. Doors and drawers are rearranged: fewer doors and deeper drawers, or a cupboard turned into a bank of drawers where the room is really a store.
The rack is the other big lever. It can be the full moulded version, the plain version, made shallower so it takes plates but not much else, or left off entirely so you have a base. The plinth cut-out can be kept, simplified or dropped. Interiors are drawn around what will go in them: shelf positions, cutlery trays, wine storage, a drawer sized for tablemats rather than a standard drawer that nearly fits.
Timber and finish
Oak, cherry, mahogany or walnut. Character oak, pippy oak in light, medium or heavy grades, medullary ray selected oak and knot-free timber are all available and quoted on application. Polished is the usual choice for a formal piece; painted, limed, sand-blasted, rub-through paint and natural are all offered, and a colour can be matched to a sample you send us. Our notes on finishes set out what each one does to oak in particular, which is not what most people expect.
How a Denbigh piece is actually arrived at
Nothing in the range is held in stock, which is the point of it. A dresser is drawn in CAD to your measurements, and then drawn again at full size as a rod, so the mouldings, the panel bevels and the drawer divisions are all resolved at their true size before anything is cut. On a piece with this much detail the rod earns its keep: a moulding that looks correct at a tenth scale can be coarse at full size, and the rod is where that gets caught.
It follows that a Denbigh commission is not returnable once drawings are approved and making has started, since the piece exists only because you asked for it in those dimensions. Anything damaged, faulty or misdescribed is put right. A dresser and rack arrives in its two parts, which is worth thinking about if the route in involves a turn on a staircase. Dressers and racks go out with two of our own people as standard, at no extra charge, and delivery is to a ground-floor room.
Time, and the sensible first move
A standard Denbigh design is normally twelve weeks, going to fifteen or sixteen when the workshop is busy, and a one-off adds roughly four weeks on top. Price is quoted rather than listed, because size, timber and finish move it considerably.
Before any of that, it is worth seeing what a fielded panel looks like in the timber you are considering. Ask for samples, or arrange to come to the workshop by appointment and look at a door in progress. The printed catalogue shows the Denbigh forms together, which is the easiest way to work out whether you want the rack, the glazed top or neither.