Shelf Up the Stairwell

The house is glazed on nearly every side — wide sliding panes in the living room, a full glass wall onto the garden in the study — and a pale brick stairwell that opens up through two storeys. In that stairwell the wall only begins to offer usable space above head height. The living room, meanwhile, is one long run with no wall dividing the zones.

Ours in this house are the open shelf standing on a low cabinet in the middle of the living room, with the long bench that runs off it to the window; the tall unit in the stairwell; a long plain-fronted cabinet; and the desk. The glass balustrade with its timber capping, and the wooden frames around the door openings, are another trade's work. The stairwell unit was measured off the opening itself and assembled up there in place — there is no floor under the middle of that void, so it went in from a ladder propped beside the glass.

Every piece carries the same set of details. The tops are boards joined into a panel, never a single wide board. The doors are plain-fronted and opened at the edge, so no metal pull cuts across the teak anywhere in the house. The desk legs and the cabinet sides are cut from board of the same thickness, so one thickness repeats from room to room, and every edge is eased the same way — furthest on the desk, where the top curves down into the leg rather than turning a corner. Apart they are separate pieces; in one house they read as a single set.

In a house with this much glass the furniture lives with direct sun through the day and with humidity that rises and falls with the weather. The divider is handled from both sides, and what sits on its shelves is lifted on and off and rearranged season by season. Reclaimed teak has done its moving long ago, so it takes all of that without twisting, and the colour deepens over the years it spends in the room.