Oxford Artweeks is upon us again and we invite you (even more than we normally would) to visit our workshops, check out the chairs, try out the tables, swoon over sideboards, and generally alliterate a lot in the name of fine furniture fashioning. And, we have work boots filled with Geraniums! Read more...

It is autumn 2015. In the workshops of Bates and Lambourne, senior cabinetmaker John Preston is building new furniture for the Chapel at the Royal Marines Barracks Stonehouse, home of the Royal Marines in Plymouth. Two buildings down the former prison camp, oversized wooden dagger handles are being turned on the lathes of RedKite Woodturners, whilst two further buildings down, a brass sconce is being made for a Paschal candlestick. In a garden shed in West Wycombe, Mick Atkins (carver par excellence) is carving a laurel wreath and a wooden globe, whilst in another garden shed in Cuddington, Jessica Ecott (glass sculptor) is etching a laurel wreath around the rim of a new glass font bowl, and planning designs for a globe to be etched onto a pair of semicircular glass doors. Meanwhile somewhere under the North Atlantic Ocean, a submarine is gliding towards Plymouth, carrying a weighty chunk of the Rock of Gibraltar requested to be ‘roughly the size of a human head’… Read more...

Ripon College was founded in 1853, its Victorian buildings now looking as venerable as many of those of its affiliates down the road in Oxford, and recently joined by the deservedly multi award winning Edward King Chapel, for which we have had the pleasure to make a bookcase, some hymn boards, a keyboard case and a cross for the central altar. Read more...

So keen are we to get on with making something else when the last one was finished that we often forget to make proper record of what we made before. So, in an attempt to put right this oversight, my colleague Diane (camera, trigger-finger, and virtual rolls of 35mm celluloid) and I (Granny’s battered vintage Harrods suitcase full of mostly unnecessary lighting equipment) went for a day’s meanderings through the quads, naves and stairwells of Oxford! Read more...

On 14th and 15th of November 2015 we will be open for Oxford Artweeks’ pre-Christmas weekend, between 9am and 4pm. We had a great time in May with the main open studios event and are pleased to stick our heads out of the sawdust-crusted window and wave again. Read more...

Here’s an unusual project: In 1968 Jimi Hendrix and his girlfriend Kathy Etchingham moved into a flat in 23 Brook St, London, now being given its due credit and being restored to its 1968 state in a permanent Hendrix exhibition. As makers of numerous styles of Windsor, we had the good fortune to be contacted about the 23 Brook Street Project. Read more...

On Thursday 16th July 2009 work began on the restoration of Great Haseley Mill. On Wednesday 25th June 2014 the sails and fan-tail were fitted onto the restored mill, two hundred and fifty-four years after the original sails began turning in 1760. Read more...

A month and a half on from the fun of Oxford Artweeks, it has been interesting to reflect on the event and how visitors have engaged with our Empire of Sheds. In this light, may I offer the following dubious observations… Read more...

In a shameless act of bribery inspired by the pleasure of opening the workshops up for Oxford Artweeks, we are delighted to announce a collaboration with The Three Pigeons Pub at Lassco, the architectural salvage company just around the corner from us. Read more...

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After the Ashmolean Museum’s critically acclaimed William Blake: Apprentice and Master, the printing press that we built to stand at the heart of the exhibition was moved to the upper library at Christ Church College, Oxford. Read more...

Notes from a small workshop: Insight Queen’s College Library. An article on the Queen’s College Library refurbishment undertaken by Bates and Lambourne. Read more...

Being involved in making the printing press for the recreation of William Blake’s Lambeth studio in the Apprentice and Master exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford has been a highlight of nearly twenty years of furniture making. Read more...

hand made furniture under contruction