Martin Holliday

Judge on the Subzero Wolf Cove international (KDC) kitchen Design Competition

We design and project manage the installation of bespoke furniture mainly for kitchens with commissions for bedrooms, libraries, studies through to boardrooms & office furniture.

Chiselwood was formed back in 1989, Feb. 28th to be precise. Here the passion for furniture really took hold working on many individual pieces from dining sets to bookcases. We were asked to take on a commission for a kitchen and this came quite naturally to us as my wife Mel and I are keen "foodies" [Mel is Chiselwood's MD of the past 15 years] . This has lead over the years to kitchen, bedroom and bathroom projects all over the UK and in later years abroad in Portugal, Ireland and Barbados. We now work on commercial projects to with an aria of projects from reception desks, boardroom table and management suites of furniture with wall panelling. Recent clients being EON, Ping Europe. Chiselwood is a small,15 employ company yet large enough to handle substantial oversees projects yet flexible enough to deal with individual furniture commissions.

Here I persued my other passion, cars, working in a specialist repair centre working on Merc, BMW's and Porsche. Here I did a fair amount of coach building and restoration, the highlight being a 1927 taxi for the Dorchester hotel. Rebuilding the ash frame and restoring the steel body work. This led me to start designing furniture in wood and mixed materials and then moved back to my home town of Lincoln

This was my apprentice year studying engineering and giving me an eye for detail. Although not following my love of wood and furniture this gave all the basic tools for the design and development work now used with Chiselwood.