Sheridan students come for a visit

We are happy to partner with Sheridan College, which has a great Furniture program in their Craft and Design Faculty. This is our second year setting a project with the Year 2 Commercial Furniture Class, taught by industrial designer Kirsten White. The course focuses on furniture design for production and introduces students to the concepts of designing product for a client, producing designs in multiples, designing for efficiency in production, cost considerations, etc.

We particularly enjoy the partnership because it gives us a chance to interact with the students and re-connect with the energy of student minds. We also offer the students the possibility of producing and adding their designs to our collection if they create a particularly successful project.

Having been design students ourselves, we remember the incredible importance of industry exposure and the valuable critiques of design professionals that helped to hone our design skills. We hope to pass on a bit of our experience and knowledge of the industry. In the end, everyone benefits.

The students recently joined us for a "grand tour" of the workshop.  

The students watch as Chad demonstrates machining on the CNC router.

Here Chad demonstrates our edgebander. 

For anyone who has edge-banded panels by hand (a time-consuming process), an edge-bander holds a certain special appeal!

The students join us in our office for a question and answer session after the tour of the workshop.

Happy Birthday to Us!

January 2012 marks Speke Klein's 13th birthday! 

We have weathered some pretty serious storms (literally) and are happy to reach this milestone.

Thank you to all our customers, colleagues, friends and family who have helped us throughout the past 13 years. We could not have done it without you!

With best wishes for the year ahead,

Robin & Thomas
Speke Klein

Happy Holidays!

Putting the Mo in Movember

So all of our employees did their part for Movember, sporting a little facial hair for a good cause. Here are a couple of pics to prove it.

A Shout Out for MimiTENS (and a visual plug for Speke Klein)

Lovely entrepreneurial mom, Anna-Marie of MimiTENS, got a huge boost to her business when celebrity style guru Gwyneth Paltrow raved about the fabulous children's mittens in her popular lifestyle newsletter GOOP. 

Here, Anna-Maria is interviewed about the brush with celebrity. Why is Speke Klein interested? Not only do we like MimiTENS, but the walnut table she displays her wares on is one of our Quinn tables! Check it out!

Our New Bedroom Furniture Collection Launches in Halifax

We were delighted to travel out to the East Coast as our new Bedroom Collection was launched this weekend at our retail partner Statement in Halifax. Roger and his team hosted a wonderful couple of days for us in honour of the new collection.

The new Highland Half Dresser in natural beech in the showcase window. 

Two of the new bed designs (the Stirling and Argyll) on the showroom floor. 

On Friday, I had the pleasure of speaking to aspiring design students from the Nova Scotia College of Arts and Design (NSCAD). I spoke about our company's creation and the evolution of our design language over time.

On Saturday there was a lovely launch party. Peach and Champagne Mimosas and tasty organic treats tempted all the visitors who browsed the collection and Statement's beautiful showroom space.

Guests chat in the showroom. Our Touch coffee table  serves as a cocktail table for refreshments.

Another image of the showroom. Our Rowlands coffee table acts as a play table for a young guest.

Our solid wood Rowlands Bed on display. 

Speke Klein and the Statement Team - from l to r - Ray (Design Director), Robin, Mark (Store Manager), Roger (Owner and host extraordinaire), and Thomas (holding our daughter who joined us for the trip). 

Week 46: The machine is up and running!

Our CNC router installation continues. We have been joined by technicians from Homag Canada who are fine-tuning everything, training us in the machine's operation and making sure things run smoothly. Here is the crew posing in front of the machine. From left to right: Ian (Homag), Bruce, Chad, Thomas and Nelio (Homag), with Kai (Homag) perched on top.

Here are images of the machine running its first test programs.

Thomas and Chad discuss the set-up of a part on the machine bed. You can see the computer console that runs the programming in the forefront of the image. The black mat at the front of the machine is a safety feature and contains sensors that will stop the machine immediately if someone steps on the mat (on the side where the part is being machined) when the router is in operation.

Chad positions a test part on the machine bed.

Here is the test part (the side of a drawer box), positioned and ready to go. It is placed on "pods" and is held down by vacuum suction.

Here is the same part getting machined. You will notice the router bit on the right side of the wood piece notching its side. The large hood over the router head deals with dust extraction.

Everyone watches as the machine runs the program to mill the part. From left to right: Kai  and Nelio (Homag), Chad, Ian (Homag), and Bruce. You will note that Chad is holding a control console as he watches the operation. This allows him to stop the machine if he has a concern about the program running correctly.