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.

Week 44: Special Delivery!

After much anticipation, we finally took delivery this week of our brand new 5-axis CNC (computer numerically controlled) router. The beautiful BMG 511 from Homag, Germany is the very first of its kind in North America.  We cannot wait to explore all that it will do for us!

Here are some images of its delivery to the workshop.

The rigging company needed 2 trucks - one for the machine itself and one for the special heavy duty forklifts and equipment needed to offload it.

The machine bed gets off-loaded from the truck...

...and manouevred through the workshop to its final position.

Kai, the technician who is going to install the machine for us, oversees the final positioning. When the workshop floor was poured, we had to create a special area with extra thick concrete to support the machine, so the accuracy of the positioning was crucial.

The machine gantry is readied for off-loading.

Preparing for "the marriage": the gantry gets positioned over the machine bed with only 1mm of space between the components so there is no room for error.

More images of the installation to come!