March’s Item of the Month is an unusual cabinet maker’s wood sample board, circa 1950, in the manner of Gordon Russell.
This unusual sample board must have been made and used in a cabinet maker’s workshop, based on the diversity and variants of woods included (rather than in a timber merchant, for instance). It may well have been used by the cabinet maker to offer to customers as a ‘catalogue’ of timbers they could select from or just as inspiration within the workshop itself.
It has been made to a design and to a high standard, and although frustratingly it has no known provenance or history, it feels like it could have been part of the Gordon Russell or a similar workshop. The firm of Gordon Russell certainly used this diversity of woods in their production at around this period.