Made by many hands: the story behind a bespoke TV screen

There’s a particular kind of object I love bringing into a home. Not the sofa or the dining table, important as they are, but the piece that only exists because someone made it for that family. 

A handmade ceramic light. A woven textile. A bespoke piece of furniture. These objects give a home a depth you can’t replicate by buying everything from the same showroom in an afternoon. They’re not simply beautiful things; they become part of the home’s story.

For this project we also commissioned a hand painted vintage sideboard, created by Gosia Roczniak, a painter with a sensational sense of colour and pattern.

The TV screen at our latest project is one of those pieces. The concept started with me, but it took two makers to bring it to life, furniture makers Bench Studio and textile artist Isabel Fletcher, and it was shaped by all three of us along the way. 

It’s also a good example of what I mean when I talk about slow design: not a look, but a way of building a home that gets richer over time.

The problem with the telly

This is a family who love art and colour, and the whole house was designed to reflect that. Every room had something to say. A large television, switched off, says very little except ‘television’, and it has a way of becoming the focal point of a room whether you want it to or not.

Most of us want to watch TV. Very few of us want to look at it when we’re not. Covering the television is a common challenge. Some clients choose a TV that doubles as a framed picture, which is a perfectly good option if you don’t want to invest in something bespoke. 

But this was a big wall, with a long, low black sideboard already running beneath it that I knew we needed to incorporate. Commissioning makers was one of the linchpin ideas for this project from the start, so the question became: what if the thing that hides the TV was itself one of the most interesting objects in the room?

The space before: we would be keeping the dark low sideboard and needed to find a way to incorporate it into a new joinery design to both hide the TV and provide a focal point

My starting point was a reference image: a screen with open shelves behind. I knew straight away that was what we wanted. With my clients, we first imagined the fabric panels as something like Japanese noren, the long, split fabric hangings hung across doorways, but the idea evolved once the makers were involved. 

I think of my role on a piece like this as editor, or creative director. I set the direction and I can say yes or no, but I’m also always asking the people making it what they think.

Full credit to Own London whose bespoke TV cabinet provided the inspiration for our approach: the simple wooden shelves, decorative screen and hard working by invisible low level storage are a fantastic combination.

One oak tree, held together with wooden pins

I brought in Ben and Charlie at Bench Studio, who I’d worked with before. They’re sustainably minded, they make beautiful, classic pieces, and I really enjoy working with them. I gave them the brief, and they worked out how to build it.

The structure they came up with is essentially pinned together with wooden pins, and the whole piece comes from a single oak tree, which is obviously lovely. Pinned joints are one of the oldest ways of putting timber together, and there’s an honesty to them: you can see how the piece is made. To let the panels slide, they 3D-printed a runner system, so the oldest technique in the piece sits alongside one of the newest.

Concept drawings from Bench Studio showing the plan for the timber structure and help map out the best volume and dimensions for the piece.

Stitched by hand, made bespoke from what we already had

For the textile panels, I did speak to an upholsterer at first, but it quickly became clear that would have left me as the lead creative. Given we had limited time and I needed to use my creative energy elsewhere, I wanted someone who would have their own creative response to the brief. 

Textile artist Isabel Fletcher was recommended to me by a friend, and I felt she had the right personality and style of work. Then she sent me a quilt she’d made from Kvadrat fabric offcuts and samples, and it felt like the perfect match. Her love of reuse was a happy coincidence rather than the reason I chose her. For this project, we used only the textiles we already had in the studio.

Everything is handmade. Isabel doesn’t use a sewing machine, so every stitch was done by hand. That’s slow work in the truest sense, and you can feel it when you stand in front of the panels.

We visited Isabel in her studio, and helped finesse the final design, checking we were happy with the stitching techniques and positioning and balance of the textile pieces.

The design is inspired by the map of South Africa. The lines running across the panels are rivers, and Lesotho sits within them. South Africa means a great deal to my clients, who brought work by South African artists with them into this house. It turns a practical piece of furniture into something deeply personal to them.

The panels are designed to work as one piece and as two. Some images look odd when you split them, a face for instance. This one doesn’t. Together, it reads as a single artwork; slide the panels apart and you have two.

Why it’s worth the time

Commissioning something like this takes longer than ordering it. It means finding the right people, trusting them with an idea, and letting the piece take shape in their hands as well as mine. It’s not the quickest route, and it’s generally not the cheapest, but it’s the one I believe in.

And the response from my clients was great. They loved it, particularly the link to their South African heritage, the joinery made without synthetic glues, and the fact that nothing else like it exists.

At Kinder Design, we love working with independent artists and makers to create pieces that are entirely personal to the people who live with them. If you're considering a residential renovation or would like to explore how bespoke furniture and craftsmanship could become part of your home, take a look at our FAQs or get in touch to discuss your project.