Years ago, before the rise of the architect, artisans – whether they worked in wood, like we do, or in plaster or stone – planned (designed) their own input into a house. Today, most typically, the artisan’s input is pre-defined by an interior architect or designer.
Often, the result is to compromise the experienced artisan, curtailing their freedom to fully deploy their skill and their material in service of a house and its owner.
Artichoke looks backwards to take our clients’ houses forward, recoupling exceptional artisan skills to design expertise. We are makers and creatives working as one to achieve the remarkable for our clients and their houses.
Our skill in space planning, our period knowledge, our keen observation of household life and our design know-how are all wholly realised in entirely individual, traditionally made interior joinery – work conceived and made so that a house – and household – can reach its full potential.
The vast majority of joiners and kitchen firms offer, at best, mass customisation – the ability to tweak certain elements of a design to fit your brief. Most often, the result is a compromise thinly veiled as a choice. We have no showroom or brochure because Artichoke joinery is truly bespoke: imagined, designed and made specifically for you, your household and your house. Our offices and our workshop are in Cheddar, Somerset. Our clients’ interiors are made there in the best-equipped and best-managed workshop of its kind in the UK. A lavish London showroom and all the costs associated with it would make it impossible for us to lavish as much time as we do on our clients and their houses.
At any one time we work with only a handful of clients. That means we can build close relationships with them and with their team. Through trust and collaboration we will help them transform their houses into the exquisite, practical family home they are dreaming of – whilst doing justice to the house itself. We know we are expensive and for that reason we take forensic care of our clients’ budgets, never wasting a penny.
It’s perfectly sensible to find a major project daunting. If you’ve been through one before you will know the pitfalls. We help our clients to avoid the trauma of a renovation gone awry by ensuring projects are properly joined-up, that every element is under control, and that there are no cracks through which anything might fall.
For every client and every house our intention is that Artichoke interiors outlast not only Artichoke and its clients, but also the next generation, and the ones that succeed it.
We call this Creating Britain’s Future Heritage; making interiors that take an honourable position in the centuries-long story of a good English house.
If a tree is felled to build a cabinet, we owe it to that tree to make the finest possible cabinet.