Sam Chinnery

I am a furniture maker and designer who lives and works at Bruntlands Farm on the Morayshire coast.

I care about many things:

The trees and materials that I use.
The function of what I make.
How I make what I make.
Who I work alongside.
The planet where we all live.

Background

I was fortunate to grow up in a stimulating and creative environment with my parent’s woodcarving and gilding workshop competing with the surrounding Scottish forests and hills for my attention. A strong appreciation of my natural surroundings and an awareness of man’s interaction with it, through craft, was formed early on.

A biology degree at Edinburgh led back to wood and craft, with several years spent developing skills and exploring design in various workshops including a period working with Andrew Lawton, master cabinet maker in Derbyshire. In 2005 I moved back to Scotland with a workshop in Dumfriesshire, then to Edinburgh in 2010 where I started working with William Grant & Sons to design and make wooden boxes for their high-end releases from The Balvenie Distillery alongside my own furniture. In 2014 I established my home and workshop at Bruntlands Farm in Morayshire. In 2022 I stopped working with The Balvenie in order to concentrate fully on furniture again.

Work

I aim to create furniture that fulfils its purpose in an honest and quiet way. I try to do this by selecting trees that have grown in the local landscape and allowing the methods of construction to guide the forms dictated by the function of the piece. Handcraft is important to me and although not fixed in tradition I respect the forms and techniques developed by generations of craftsmen responding to timber and allow this influence in my own contemporary design.

A stool in Oak, shaped to fit and balance, legs jointed through, blackened and scorched by fire.

A small desk in Cherry and Laburnum, it’s single drawer hand-built from Oak and Cedar of Lebanon, dovetails strong and elegant.

Ultimately, I want to make useful objects that enhance people’s surroundings, that they find beautiful and have meaning for them.

Workshop

The workshop is situated in a wonderful old steading which has been converted sympathetically and specifically into a space ideally suited to doing woodwork at the highest level. I work alongside 6 other makers, each doing their own thing but forming a supportive and diverse community.

The workshop has a good mix of heavy, classic woodworking machinery and new, very high quality, saws and planers. We also have extensive wood storage, conditioning and kilning facilities as well as a dedicated finishing room.

Wood

Wood is at the heart of everything I do. Almost exclusively I use native timber, and a lot of my work is made from trees that I have collected, sawn and seasoned myself. Over the years I am very fortunate to have built up a wonderful collection of timber, most of which has grown in Scotland but also many wonderful trees gathered during my time in Derbyshire.

Oak, Ash, Elm, Cherry, Walnut, Sycamore, Maple, Beech, Yew, Laburnum, Pear, Cedar of Lebanon, London Plane, Holly, Douglas Fir….

All these trees have been collected when they had to be felled for other reasons, never specifically for the timber they contain.

Commissioning and buying work

Most of the furniture I make is by commission. Please contact me, I will be very happy to talk about any piece or pieces that you may have in mind. I like free standing pieces but built-in and fitted furniture is also quite possible. My work has ranged from huge tables that can seat 14 down to intricate boxes designed to hold a single ring.

Commissioning starts with a conversation and then usually a visit to you or an invitation to the workshop. Then sketches can then be done, and prices and timescales discussed and agreed. Further drawings follow if appropriate, then a deposit, before making can then happen.

In between the commissioned work I like making speculative pieces for sale, direct from the workshop or through galleries and exhibitions. I am particularly fond of making stools of varied shapes and timbers. If you are interested in what is available please contact me and I can send details.

Bruntlands Farm

My wife, Clare Fennell, and I bought Bruntlands Farm in 2014 as a place to live and work. It was a run down but working mixed farm with 7 acres still retained. We had a notion of a community of craftspeople, artists, and food businesses and are enjoying it’s gradual development. We currently have 6 craftspeople working out of the workshops, an artist studio in one of the barns and Clare runs her thriving Sourdough bakery, Bruntlands Bread. We also have a commercial poly-tunnel and market garden which is being run by an independent couple growing in an organic and sustainable way.

The rest of land has been planted up as a mixed native woodland. I am yet to make any furniture from any of the trees that we have been planted but this will happen at some point.

All the heating on the farm is provided by a biomass woodchip boiler. This takes all the sawdust from the workshop to supplement the local sourced softwood chip.

For electricity 100% is from renewables. Currently brought in but we have plans to install a set of solar panels to allow for the majority of our power use to be generated onsite.

For more information please follow the link to:

Bruntlands.co.uk

Sam Chinnery

I am a furniture maker and designer who lives and works at Bruntlands Farm on the Morayshire coast.

I care about many things:

The trees and materials that I use.

The function of what I make.

How I make what I make.

Who I work alongside.

The planet where we all live.

Background

Work

A stool in Oak, shaped to fit and balance, legs jointed through, blackened and scorched by fire.

A small desk in Cherry and Laburnum, it’s single drawer hand-built from Oak and Cedar of Lebanon, dovetails strong and elegant.

Ultimately, I want to make useful objects that enhance people’s surroundings, that they find beautiful and have meaning for them.

Workshop

The workshop is situated in a wonderful old steading which has been converted sympathetically and specifically into a space ideally suited to doing woodwork at the highest level. I work alongside 6 other makers, each doing their own thing but forming a supportive and diverse community.

The workshop has a good mix of heavy, classic woodworking machinery and new, very high quality, saws and planers. We also have extensive wood storage, conditioning and kilning facilities as well as a dedicated finishing room.

Wood

Oak, Ash, Elm, Cherry, Walnut, Sycamore, Maple, Beech, Yew, Laburnum, Pear, Cedar of Lebanon, London Plane, Holly, Douglas Fir….

All these trees have been collected when they had to be felled for other reasons, never specifically for the timber they contain.

Commissioning and buying work

Commissioning starts with a conversation and then usually a visit to you or an invitation to the workshop. Then sketches can then be done, and prices and timescales discussed and agreed. Further drawings follow if appropriate, then a deposit, before making can then happen.

In between the commissioned work I like making speculative pieces for sale, direct from the workshop or through galleries and exhibitions. I am particularly fond of making stools of varied shapes and timbers. If you are interested in what is available please contact me and I can send details.

Bruntlands Farm

The rest of land has been planted up as a mixed native woodland. I am yet to make any furniture from any of the trees that we have been planted but this will happen at some point.

All the heating on the farm is provided by a biomass woodchip boiler. This takes all the sawdust from the workshop to supplement the local sourced softwood chip.

For electricity 100% is from renewables. Currently brought in but we have plans to install a set of solar panels to allow for the majority of our power use to be generated onsite.

For more information please follow the link to: