Some commissions arrive as a brief. Some arrive as a vision. The Mighty Stag arrived as both — and it became one of the most ambitious pieces we've made in our West Yorkshire workshop.
The Brief
The client was a hotel — The Mighty Stag — looking for a statement piece for their kitchen. Not a decorative object, but a working breadboard that could hold its own in a professional environment while telling the story of the place. It needed to be large, it needed to be beautiful, and it needed to carry the hotel's identity in a way that felt permanent.
We love a brief like this.
The Design
The starting point was the stag — the hotel's emblem and namesake. We worked up a pattern for a stag's head that would sit proud of the board surface, not printed or engraved, but cast. In bronze. The name of the hotel would be routed directly into the oak in a clean, classic typeface — deep enough to read at a glance, refined enough to feel considered.
The Making
The board itself was cut from a substantial piece of solid oak — chosen for its grain, its weight, and its ability to age beautifully in a working kitchen. We shaped and finished it by hand, oiling the surface to bring out the warmth of the timber.
The stag's head was cast in bronze from our pattern — a process that requires patience. First, a wax pattern is made with every detail of the final piece.
The raw casting comes out of the mould rough and unfinished — the transformation from wax to bronze is dramatic, but the real work is still to come.
It's only through fettling — the careful cleaning, filing, and finishing of the bronze — that the detail emerges. Antlers, eyes, the set of the jaw. It's slow work, but it's the work that makes the difference.
Once the bronze was finished, it was set into the board — flush enough to sit securely, proud enough to catch the light.
The Result
The finished board is substantial. The kind of thing that gets placed on a kitchen counter and stays there — not because there's nowhere else to put it, but because it earns its place. The oak will darken with use. The bronze will develop a patina. In ten years it will look better than it does today.
That's what bespoke means to us. Not just made to order, but made to last.
See more of our bespoke commissions in our portfolio
Commission Your Own
If you have a project in mind — a business, a home, a gift that needs to be truly one of a kind — we'd love to hear about it. Every commission starts with a conversation.