Virtual Showrooms Give a Boost to a Niermann Weeks Classic

Do you know that Niermann Weeks products appear on the virtual showrooms of Decorati.com
and Architectural Digest’s shopAD.net? For months visitors have made our Renishaw
Commode our most clicked- on product, and we’ve gotten a steady stream of orders from that
visibility. I love it!

Niermann Weeks' Renishaw Commode

Our standard finish is Bleached Oak with Faux Tin Grilles.

Niermann Weeks' Bleached Oak Finish

Niermann Weeks Faux Tin Finish

Designing this product incorporated lots of our interests. Joe had wanted to work with the
geometry of a double curve, horizontally on the top and vertically on the carcass. To make the
mathematical problem even more complex, he decided to include oval grills inlaid over the
carcass curve. We had recently been touring in the north of London with our English showroom
owners and seen lots of incredible antique cabinetry constructed in rounds and elliptical shapes.
Most of them featured fine woods with brass grilles, both elegantly finished in a high sheen. The
English, however, as a joke, fabricated some pieces in more mundane materials like recycled
oak and the humble metal, tin. Tatiana, Andy, and Joe liked the idea of getting in on this play.

We borrowed the name from Renishaw Hall, a stately home in Derbyshire where the Sitwell
family continues residence for over four centuries. We could only gawk at the exterior, which
was too bad, as Dame Edith Sitwell (1887-1964) had written some of Joe’s favorite poetry. She
had also written that her father Sir George Sitwell consumed his time by taking tiny steps
throughout the rooms. Can you imagine so little to do? We couldn’t either, which is why we
borrowed the name of their family home for our commode.

Renishaw Hall in Derbyshire, home of the Sitwell Family

In honor of the length of Renishaw Hall, we make that sideboard in two lengths, 72″ and an even
longer 84″. That gives lots of top surface for your own personal displays.

Over the years customers have favored us with many orders for our Renishaw. You’ve seen
some of the interesting custom variations in shape and finish in my blog “Yes, We
Have Sideboards.” We finished this one in the summer. If you have eagle eyes, you saw it as a
small background detail in an earlier blog. I won’t tell you when – just in case you like the
excitement of the hunt.

This customer specified a standard 84″ length, but wanted a custom celadon finish on most of
the carcass. Behind the grilles, we put a golden faux bois (the French term for pretend wood
grain), and then did the grilles themselves in faux tin. Getting this finish right involved a strike-off,
which is the paint sample propped in front of the center right leg. To make sure Niermann
Weeks would get the finish just right, we sent the other half of this painted sample for approval to
the customer and her designer. Once they gave us the OK, then we went to work.

A custom Niermann Weeks Renishaw Commode in a Celadon Finish

This pair of Renishaws went down to the warehouse today for shipping to a home in upstate New
York. This customer selected the cream finish from our painted Satyr Table
as the base color, and then had us glaze it down a little. They requested the grilles in Venetian
silverleaf.

Custom Niermann Weeks Renishaw Commodes in Venetian Silver Leaf

Obviously pale, neutral grey-greens are a design theme these days, as you can see from yet
another Renishaw order. Here the designer asked us to use the green from our Campanella
Chair on the carcass, keeping the grilles in the standard faux tin. It is so much fun for us to
watch our customers mixing and matching finishes, and the selection tells us a lot about what’s
hot in the design world at a given moment.