A furniture repair workshop / 2024
Alder Repair
Worth keeping.
Two furniture restorers were being mistaken for an antiques shop. Their new website needed to explain the work before anybody loaded a wardrobe into a van.
What they came with
Ruth and Dev had a full workshop and the wrong enquiries: valuations, house clearances, and requests to buy objects that weren’t for sale. Their photographs showed finished furniture but never what had been wrong with it.
What we saw in the fallow
We spent a week documenting repairs, including the awkward middle. A joint taken apart tells you more about the skill involved than a polished table ever can. Customers also needed permission to bring in an ordinary, sentimental chair.
A note from the work
The repair should be visible. So should the person doing it.
— Ingrid & MateoWhat we made
A sturdy identity and a website built around before, during, and after. A repair guide explains what can be saved, what an estimate needs, and when it makes sense to leave something alone. Captions are as important as photographs. We return each winter to help document another year’s work.
What grew
Enquiries began arriving with the right photographs and a useful history of the object. Ruth now writes the repair notes herself. The battered kitchen chairs finally get equal billing with the antiques.
“We spend less time explaining what we don’t do.”
Ruth, co-founder of Alder
