Extreme Cuisine
Cabinet Maker
The billionaire market is niche, but prosperous. And bespoke kitchen and cabinet specialist Artichoke has made meeting the demands of well-heeled clients its forte.
In the three years that director Andrew Petherick has been with the company he has witnessed everything from a hand-carved limestone bath suspended in the air while a house is built around it, to a vanity cupboard for an heiress designed to store more then 1,200 shades of lipstick.
‘Bruce Hodgson, who founded the company, has an extremely high level of service he wanted to offer. He moved through a series of markets, and arrived at the one market that wanted it and could afford it – the billionaire market,' says Petherick.
Artichoke's 45 staff include professional fitting and installation teams, creatives and project-management teams.
He joined Artichoke from a client handling career with advertising giant Saatchi & Saatchi. Petherick, as with 90% of Artichoke's staff, is also a trained cabinet-maker. The starting point for a project can be literally anything, he says.
‘For a private client, it could be that they have no idea what they want but have seen something in a magazine that they like, in which case we will present them with design ideas.'
Or it could be the case that a client has a particular fascination with Charles Rennie Mackintosh. ‘In which case, we will send our designer to Glasgow to do some research,' he explains. ‘Each brief is unique.'
Working on everything from £75m houses to ambitious newbuilds that exist only on paper, Artichoke enjoys a standing whereby companies target it, rather than the other way round.
‘We work with architects and designers, who then recommend us for work on other projects. We don‘t take these recommendations lightly – when someone puts your name forward, their reputation goes on the line with you.
‘If there's one important lesson I've learnt, it's that integrity is everything.'
Often this means going above and beyond what lies in the remit of a contract.
‘If someone doesn't like something, and it's a reasonable request, even if it has been costed and signed off, we will often make late changes, to guarantee perfect results. When, six months down the line, a client is sitting round the table with family or friends, we want them to talk about our approach as infallible.'
Petherick cites the instance of installing a bath, carved out of a piece of limestone, worth £16,000.
‘The end product was going to be too heavy to get into any house, so the house ended up being built around it. It was left suspended from a huge crane for some time, just hanging in the air.'
A current project is the entire cabinetry for a house in Belgravia. Often requests come in with a more unusual twist.
‘Shooting is currently popular among the rich; it is becoming a more frequent request that we fit gunrooms.
If you have spent £150,000 on a pair of brand new side-by-side guns, you want the cabinetry to show them off, not a metal box under the stairs.
We have built a humidity-controlled room recently for a Russian client, especially for the storage of fur.'
That, perhaps, is not the most remarkable. One American heiress requested a vanity unit to allow her to line up 1,200 lipsticks, each a different shade. The weight of the makeup was an important consideration as she wanted it is glazed lacquer, which, if the wood bows, cracks just like glass.'
Catering for any brief is the bottom line for this team.
‘Buying bespoke kitchens from Smallbone or Mark Wilkinson Furniture, you choose a range, and tailor it to your tastes,' says Petherick. ‘It's like buying a suit from Austin Reed – it's off the peg but you can have adjustments made.
When we talk about bespoke, there are no core ranges involved; each project really is a blank slate. It's an expensive process, but that is what clients at this end of the market are happy to pay for.'
The designs Artichoke creates are so discreet that they leave behind no signature mark.
‘The higher the market goes, the more completely individual it gets,' says Petherick.
Sometimes Russian tycoons who have houses all over the world call the company in to replicate the layout of their main home in a £15m property in London – that they inhabit for just two weeks of the year. This can involve flying out to research the client's house, analysing everything from layout to where they keep their toothpaste in the bathroom,' explains Petherick.
‘Once these people have made their money, they don't kick back and become international playboys. They tend to be the hardest working people, and building their wealth relies a great deal on international travel.'
Although Artichoke has worked recently on a palace in Saudi Arabia and undertaken jobs in country homes around Moscow, most of its work is carried out in its studio, just outside Bristol.
There is also a project director and studio based in Chelsea, London, to show off samples.
Kitchens have been commissioned from Artichoke for an eye-watering £250,000 plus VAT. But the more regular scale is between £80,000 and £120,000 plus VAT.
‘When you think that a marble slab can cost £10,000 alone, and that two to three weeks of fitting carries its own price, it's easy to reach these figures,' says Petherick.
The fact that the company is booked up six months in advance and is looking to take on new recruits to its technical team, proves that in this market, price is no object. A perfectionist service, however, is paramount.
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