Oak furniture ranges and manufacturers Our oak furniture section includes over three dozen ranges of oak furniture, plus a selection of comparable quality ash furniture, from nine manufacturers. One of the most popular ranges is the
New Solid Oak collection from West Country-based
Devonshire Pine Ltd. This includes living room furniture, dining room furniture and bedroom furniture. Some of the most impressive items are the dining tables, dressers and wardrobes which really show the quality of the furniture and represent excellent value for money.
For cosumers it can be hard to compare 'like for like' furniture ranges, one example of this is the
Brooklyn Oak Furniture range.
A low cost way for Devon Pine to broaden the appeal of the bedroom range was to offer it in square and dark stain versions. The
Square Oak range can be distinguished from the solid oak range by the square-edged tops to cabinets and the change from metal handles to wooden knobs. Dark wood furniture is less popular than it once was, but the richness of the colour still maintains a loyal following. The company caters to this with their
Dark Oak range, which is essentially the same construction as the Devon New Oak range but completed with a dark stain before the final coat of lacquer.
Following the success of these ranges, Devonshirepine.co.uk, introduced a rustic range in 2008. The
Rustic Oak range includes the same high standards of construction, with features such as dovetail joints to drawers and solid timber cabinet backs and drawer bases. But it also has a much heavier styling with, for example, noticeably thicker cabinet tops. This is completed with chunky, dark metal, handles and a distressed finish with features such as rounded corners and surface marks. Rustic furniture is a popular style and competition is fierce, but this range is selling well, thanks no doubt to the high quality construction and finish from this supplier.
Some people like the heavy style of the rustic range, but prefer a slightly less rustic appearance and to cater for this market, Devon Oak has subsequently introduced the
Distressed Oak range, also sometimes called the Chunky Oak range. This enjoys a similarly heavyweight style of construction but corners are left square instead of rounded and although there are still ‘distress’ marks and imperfections these are more restrained than the rustic range.
A supplier at the other end of the scale in terms of size is
ASL. This company is also based in Devon, but this time nearer to the south east borders of the county. It supplies two ranges of bedroom and living room furniture and a range of oak office furniture, the
Cambridge Office range. Like its larger counterpart to the west, the company’s contemporary-styled collection has minimalist styling and is completed with brushed metal handles. In acknowledgement perhaps of the ancient Celtic associations of the region, the range is called the
Derwen range (Derwen being the Welsh word for oak).
In addition to its contemporary oak range, the little company also supplies a very competitively-priced rustic range called the
Brampton range. This offers an attractive selection of bedroom and lounge furniture items such as coffee tables, bookcases and chests of drawers, all with good quality metal fittings and an authentically ‘distressed’ finish.
Whilst still on the subject of small suppliers and rustic furniture, there is another company called
DFP or Direct Forest Products that produces a truly excellent range of rustic furniture. This is the
Trafalgar range of bedroom and living room furniture. It is made of solid oak and the fittings are very good quality. But perhaps the best features are the good colour tone, that looks like a weathered or sun bleached dark oak; the finish which is not too glossy and the distressing which is convincingly understated.
More noted for its good quality, traditional-style, pine furniture than its oak ranges is Sussex-based
CPW. This is not surprising for a company that was established by stripping old pine furniture (the letters stand for Country Pine Warehouse) but, that said, it’s
Chichester range of oak furniture, launched in 2009, is a successful combination of good quality construction, good design and good materials. The styling is slightly heavier and more traditional than its previous oak ranges, the Wealden and
Tuscany ranges. These have a contemporary styling, although the sharp lines on some pieces are sometimes reminiscent of Arts & Crafts or Art Deco styling. This is particularly well illustrated by the large sideboard from the
Wealden range and Wealden double pedestal dressing table.
Those looking for cheap furniture, but who still prefer wooden furniture to some of the composite material offerings from some DIY and lifestyle stores, might wish to consider the ranges from our supplier of self-assembly ranges,
Core Products. Core specialises in sourcing better quality flat pack furniture from around the world. It is a major UK supplier of Mexican furniture but its
Vermont ranges of bedroom and living room furniture are made of a blend of hardwoods that, if not actually solid oak, certainly look the part.
The home address for Coreproducts.co.uk is in Perth, Scotland but roughly half way between here and CPW, in the county that calls itself ‘the Heart of England,’ is another well established company,
Kettle Containers Ltd. Originally set up to import furniture by the (shipping) container-load, Kettle is now developing its operations to the extent that it has changed its name to Kettle Interiors. Whatever the name, kettle-containers.co.uk currently supplies a contemporary-style range of bedroom and living room furniture called, the Contemporary range(!) and a rustic-style collection that goes by the name of the
Rutland range. These are fully assembled ranges of a dependable quality and finish, although not all pieces are perhaps as keenly priced as some of their competitors.
It is easy sometimes for suppliers to fall into the trap of always taking the safe option when it comes to furniture styles, but one company that appears consistently to produce furniture that is fashionable, fun and competitively priced is
PD Global. This company, for example, was one of the first to introduce various ranges of painted furniture as it started to become popular and it happily supplies traditional and contemporary ranges of oak furniture. The traditional offerings include the Cotswold collection that we at Right Price Furniture call
Old Cotswold to avoid confusion with an existing pine range of the same name.
PDG’s contemporary oak range is the
Yorke range. This comprises various items of living room furniture including an attractive corner TV cabinet. Pdglobal.co.uk does not sell direct to the public but we offer most of their ranges and are happy to try and accommodate requests for any of the company’s products not listed on our website.
The history of oak furnitureIn the UK, Oak furniture has been the preferred choice for centuries. The timber has so many fine qualities that it was historically a universal building material and references to oak are deeply embedded in British culture in many forms. These range from the Pagan 'Green Man' to the names of public houses and even the official march of the Royal Navy.
Antique oak furniture would have been made of English oak or the highly-prized Welsh oak, but the depredations of the Industrial Revolution and two World Wars mean supplies of these British oak stocks are limited and very expensive. A more affordable source of oak for furniture is North America where, for example, much of the oak furniture from Devonshire Pine Ltd is sourced.
Have you ever wondered...
why some oak furniture seems to be better quality or more attractive than other oak furniture, even though it’s all solid oak? And why is it sometimes better to have furniture that is NOT solid oak all the way through? We aim to provide beginners with an insight into identifying the best quality oak furniture and choosing the most suitable furniture for their homes.
Not all oak is the same
People sometimes forget that oak is a natural product. Manufacturers and cabinet makers supplying oak furniture do, on the whole, a good job of matching the colour and grain pattern so that every item they make matches the other items from that range. They are skilled in taking hundreds or even thousands of individual trees and displaying their unique grain patterns in furniture yet all the while closely matching elements such as colour tone and the distribution of knots with the hundreds of other trees being used.
400 species of oak
Apart from the uniqueness of the individual oak tree, there is also the fact that the oak family has in excess of 400 different species, distributed through Europe, Asia, North and South America and extending from the coldest northern climates to tropical regions. The oak traditionally used for furniture in Britain and Europe would, not surprisingly, be the European White Oaks. These tend to be the oaks of the highest quality for furniture making, in terms of strength and appearance. When European settlers moved to North America they sought trees that were similar to those they already used and American Red Oaks can offer many similar qualities.
Oak that grows further afield, in places such as Asia, still has many of the qualities of its European counterparts although locally it does not enjoy the same pre-eminence amongst trees. It may be competing against species such as teak or mahogany that are even better adapted to the local climate.
Knots and splits
A knot forms wherever a branch grows out of an existing trunk or stem. This is a part of the natural process but, as with everything else, man has progressively selected oaks for timber production that tend to produce long, knot-free lengths of wood. The knarled oaks favoured in picture books and fairy stories are not the ones used for timber production. Careful timber management, such as removing the lower branches from the growing tree, also helps improve the timber quality of the tree when it is finally harvested. It will be appreciated therefore, that the better quality furniture oak will have fewer and smaller knots.
Splitting and warping of oak furniture
All oak will split or warp if it is not used correctly and the fault can lie with the user of the furniture just as much as the maker. The process that occurs is a simple one: the stem or branch of the living oak transports hundreds of gallons of water from the ground to the leaves and branches. When the tree is harvested it still contains much of this water, which must be removed to help preserve the timber.
Seasoning is the process of drying the timber to remove the moisture. If carried out too quickly, the spaces left in the timber as the water disappears will be taken up by the fibres of the wood moving closer together, causing the timber to lose its original shape and warp. If the wood fibres are unable to move closer together, perhaps because of the shape into which the timber has been sawn, then they will instead tear apart, causing the splits that can often be seen in, for example, timber beams.
Timber will continue to dry out even after seasoning, so furniture makers have developed several techniques to avoid warps and splits occurring in the finished products. One of these is to form wide panels by gluing together several narrower strips of timber. The narrow strips are arranged so the tendency for one strip to curve in one direction is counteracted by its neighbour’s tendency to curve in the opposite direction. How successfully the colour and grain pattern of the different strips match together depends on the quality of the timber and the skill of the furniture maker. Some makers overcome the problem by adding a layer of veneer to give a perfect, uninterrupted grain pattern across the whole panel.
Drawer bases and cabinet backs are particular problem areas and the traditional solution has always been to build the drawer in such a way that the timber could expand and contract across the width of its grain by allowing movement for the base at the back of the drawer. On cabinet backs the timber planks were fitted with the grain running horizontally, so allowing the expansion or contraction to take place out of sight at the base of the cabinet.
The effects of central heating on solid wood furniture
Since the advent of central heating the atmosphere in homes has been much warmer and drier and this has caused problems for all wooden furniture. The effects on older or antique furniture have been lessened as this furniture has been continually drying out since it was first made. Makers of new furniture have tried to overcome the problems by using some of the construction techniques mentioned above and by drying more of the moisture out of timber before it is used.
However, if the owners of new oak furniture place it in rooms that are even dryer or warmer than the average then warping or, more usually, splitting is likely to be a problem. In these cases it may be better to purchase oak furniture constructed using a combination of man-made materials and solid oak. This is because the man-made materials are more stable in warm, dry environments while the natural wood can be retained to preserve an attractive appearance to the furniture.