The bloom is the signature. Every panel keeps the exact colour the steel turned when the arc passed — straw at the edge, plum at the root — no two alike, and none of them from a spray can.
How it goes
From the sitting to the second glance
The same sequence on every job — the only variable is your project.
Week 0
The sitting
You bring the room — photographs, the window it must sit beside, the floor it must not scratch. We leave with a tape story, a material shortlist and a note of everything the piece must not look like.
Week 1
The maquette
A palm-sized steel sketch of the actual piece, bloom and all. You hold it before you approve a drawing — hands decide what elevations only argue about.
Weeks 2–5
The bench
Parts cut, fittings forged, beads laid at walking pace. Structural joints are MIG’d inside where the load lives; every bead an eye will find is TIG’d and dressed, never ground anonymous.
Week 6
The bloom & the finish
Heat-tint, linseed-blackened or clear-waxed — decided by the pair of sample tiles you approved at the maquette, not by what was easiest that Friday.
Delivery
The set
Bolted, levelled, photographed on site, and touched with wax a season later when we come back to check nothing has moved. Within the Reach, the set is ours; beyond it, we meet the truck.
What we do
Three commissions the bench taught us
The floating stair
Paired ten-millimetre stringers, water-jet profiled, with oak treads bolted through slotted holes so the wood breathes with the seasons. From the hall it reads as one line of steel from landing to landing — the bolts live in shadow gaps nobody finds without being told.
The harvest table
A single three-metre slab of Willow Reach elm on a forge-welded frame, seated in slotted shoes so the slab does its own expanding. The steel is linseed-blackened; the elbows of the frame are forged, not mitred, because a mitre in black steel is a seam that admits it was cut.
The passage screen
Bronze rod set into a mild-steel frame, TIG’d with silicon-bronze rod so the join disappears into the same warm colour. It hides a servery from the door and hides nothing from the light — the pattern was drawn from the reeds it faces.
The piece
from $3,400
- One maquette, two revisions
- Material sample pair, approved in hand
- Bench-built by one of two names
- Heat-bloom or clear-wax finish
Tables, screens, hearth pieces
The suite
from $9,800
- Table, screen or rail as one family
- Bloom matched across every part
- Delivery and set inside the Reach
- Ten-year structural promise, in writing
Rooms that want to agree with themselves
The stair
by drawing
- Water-jet stringers, load-rated
- Oak or steel treads, bolted
- Guard designed with your builder
- Stamp-ready drawings included
- Rush weeks — the bench does not hurry
The commission that holds the house up
Willow Reach & away, 2025 — 2026
The portfolio wall
Six pieces at handover. The colours are the steel’s own — photographing heat bloom is the studio’s second craft.
Since 2016
The studio, in figures
Two benches, one plasma table, a forge that predates both of us, and a booking list that runs a season deep. The numbers below are the whole operation — there is no back room.
The stair arrived in nine pieces and went together like a thought. The bead runs the whole stringer in one pass — our joiner photographed it, and the grandchildren will find the photographs.
We asked for a screen to hide a servery. We got a screen people photograph before they order, because the heat colours shift with the daylight like it is paying attention to the room.
Before the sitting
Fair questions
The five the studio answers most. If yours is not here, the bench phone at the bottom of the page is answered between ten and four, unless we are mid-bead.
How long is the wait?
The bench books a season out, and maquettes can start sooner — the maquette queue is its own, shorter list. A stair that needs engineering adds the engineer’s calendar to ours; we say whose week is whose at the sitting, not after.
Can you match a bloom between two pieces?
Yes, and the sample pair is how: two tiles welded in the same session, one kept at the studio and one nailed inside your piece. When a sister piece is commissioned years later, we weld against the reference, not against memory.
Do you galvanize?
Exterior pieces go in the kettle and come back matte grey, so they are waxed black over the zinc — the weather gets metal that cannot rust and you get the colour you commissioned. Interior blooms never see the kettle; zinc would erase them.
How much weight can that table take?
The frame is rated to four hundred kilos and the slab does its own work. The drawing that comes with the piece states the rating, the bolt torques and the wax schedule — a table from here leaves with its own small manual.
Do you take house calls?
Within the Reach, gladly — sittings happen in the room the piece will live in, which is the entire point. Away from it, we start with photographs and a video walk-through, and travel twice: once to measure, once to set.
The bench books a season deep — maquettes anytime · (555) 017-6304 · studio@billetandbloom.example
Bring the room; we’ll bring the steel
A photograph of the corner, the ceiling height, and one sentence about the piece — enough for us to say what a maquette would cost and when the bench could hold it. Studios run on calendars; commissions run on conversations. studio@billetandbloom.example