Crafting bespoke timber furniture to last generations

With a range of over 200 made-to-measure pieces, the Auckland-based family-owned business is passionate about showcasing traditional woodworking techniques and working together with homeowners to make furniture that will be treasured for generations to come. 

Collaboration is a key part of creating pieces like this.

“When we work with clients, they take ownership – at the end, they’ve had an involvement in the design process. I think it’s so important in people’s homes that parts have been created by them,” says Martin Bell, Managing Director at Rose & Heather. 

All furniture designs in Rose & Heather’s repertoire can be adjusted to suit the dimensions needed in a particular space while ensuring that the result fits with the design’s intended proportions. 

“We will give our customers guidance as to what will work because we have developed enough expertise over the years to know what will work and what balance is needed. It’s formulaic. Often you look at a piece of furniture and you don’t know why you like it, and often it’s the ratio, the proportion of the height in relation to the length and so on.

“For example, the Bailey Table is narrow – which, in my opinion, the narrower the table the more elegant. It also makes more of a feature of the origin of the table,” says Martin, with the Bailey Table mimicking the elegant early lines of the ‘golden era’ of yachting. 

“Some people prefer a narrow table where the conversation across the table is easy, while some clients prefer a wider table where the food event is in the middle of it. There is always the conversation around balance and proportion.”

Swamp kauri extracted from the Northland – pieces that can be up to 36,000 years old – is primarily used for feature pieces on tops and drawer faces. American ash, cherries and oak are also often used. 

Pieces of timber already owned by clients that perhaps have sentimental value can also be incorporated into Rose & Heather’s designs. 

“If the pieces are up to the standard that we need them to be, we can make with them. We’ve done this before where a client’s grandfather left her a sizable amount of timber and we made a bedroom suite for her. That bedroom suite means so much to her because she knows where the timber has come from.”

It’s this versatility and ability to repurpose and refurbish timber that Martin loves most about the natural material, along with its warmth and tactile qualities. 

“We make pieces that are totally sustainable because we make our pieces to a standard that means in 20 or 30 years, they can be refurbished and renewed all using the same raw materials. It means you’ve got a doubling of the life cycle. We do a lot of refurbishment on pieces we made 20, 30, 40 years ago. When a client brings a piece back to us, we’ll refurbish it and that relationship starts all over again. I’m not sure you can do that with a lot of other mediums.”

Rose & Heather has recently relocated to a new site where the workshop is right next to the studio showroom. This means clients can visit the workshop floor for a tour to see the process in action. 

“It’s a lovely relationship of being able to see the process and the finished product side by side.”

If you’d like to visit the showroom for this experience, get in touch with the Rose & Heather team. A range of made-to-order furniture designs are also available to view on ArchiPro.