Finishing Touches

What is a finishing touch?

To me, it's one of those little things you no longer have to think about, because somebody has finished it. Once and for all.

The peg rail in the exact spot where the coats actually come off. Somewhere perfect to keep your shoes and wellies, so they aren't lying in a heap by the back door. The reminder to grab the poo bags on your way out for the dog walk. The tray that lives in just the right place for when you need it.

None of them are grand. Most visitors wouldn't notice them at all. But they make life run a little smoother, every single day.

The real gift of a finishing touch is that it takes a decision away from you at the very moment you least want to make it.

Nobody wants to decide where the keys go when they're already late. Nobody wants to hunt for the lead while the dog is spinning in circles at the door. When you're in a rush, every small decision is one too many.

A finishing touch means that decision has already been made. Sometimes by an earlier version of you, on a quieter afternoon, who had the time to stand in the hallway and think "this is where it should go". Sometimes by somebody else entirely. We've all stayed somewhere that felt as if someone had thought of everything... the hook by the door exactly where you reach for it, a boot jack waiting on the step, a tray by the kettle with everything you need for the first cup of the morning. You notice it, and you relax. Somebody looked after you before you even arrived.

That's what we try to do with what we make. Plenty of our designs started as a small annoyance at home. A pile of boots by the back door. Keys that went missing at the worst possible moment. Or the question asked in every dog-owning house at some point in the day: did anyone actually feed the dog? We make the things we wish existed, and then we think hard about where they'll be used.

Many of our pieces carry some words too, and they tend to do one of two jobs.

Sometimes they simply help you figure it out. KEYS on a key organiser. Names along the peg rail, so even the smallest person in the house knows which peg is theirs. The family name on the welly rack. Words like these quietly tell everyone how the house works, without anybody having to say it twice.

Other times the words ask you to slow down for a moment. A well placed shelf will keep what you need to hand every day, and most days that's all it does. But every now and then you catch the words carved along its edge, and you take a second to appreciate what they really mean.

One of my favourites comes from William Morris:

He said it in a lecture in 1880 and it hasn't aged a day.

That, I think, is what a finishing touch really is. Something useful enough that you'd miss it the day it wasn't there, and beautiful enough that you're glad to see it every time you walk past.

Oak helps. It will take a lifetime of wet coats and muddy boots and look all the better for it. Which is the other half of "finished": you only have to do it once.

So the next time you're heading out of the door, notice where you hesitate. Where you stop to look for something, or put something down that doesn't really belong there. That's where a finishing touch belongs.

Then let a calmer version of you, on a quieter afternoon, sort it out once and for all.