To be or not to be

This article has been prepared especially for those who, not being Hamlet,

are tormented by the question "to be or not to be". We will tell a little about our life journey, which led to the fact that our modest team of two people is currently the only team on our planet that offers to buy new furniture and other interior items in the Art Nouveau or Art Deco style - in the narrow sense of the word. That is, those particular products that we offer = made only by us.

So, in Russia,

 many people are able to work with the head and hands, and simultaneously. This explains a lot. Here we will simply show a photograph with meaning -

It is unknown who so accurately formulated the idea "if you want to do well, do it yourself. This manifests itself best in the case of building your own house, apartment. Everyone can hire builders, decorators, spend a lot of money to pay for their work, get their first gray hair or their first heart attack. But who of such builders will make you simple skirting boards like this? The picture shows the result of the daily, for 25 years, battles of the skirting board with several generations of vacuum cleaners -

That's right, no one. That's a great pity. And that's just "attention to detail.
From this you should make for yourself the main conclusion - we are not slaves of money, we do not work for money, but for pleasure. Out of vanity? - Maybe. Quite possible. Yes, we pride ourselves on being "nobody but us."

However,

the purpose of this page is to show interested buyers that we really can do what we offer at Individual Orders. Here we will show that we know how to work with "big shapes." While we offer to buy the usual products - lamps, chairs and so on - we also offer to make large shapes individually, for example a closet. Closet is usually a depth of about 450 - 600mm, height is usually up to 1800mm, width up to 800-900mm. Believe me, it's much smaller than the partition we made between our library and our workshop, which is about 4500 mm long and over 2000 mm high, with two double-leaf doors and a large window, all in carved wood panels and stained glass, with ventilation ducts and noise insulation -

It was our first experience with stained glass -

The experience is very useful - since 2019, these stained glass windows are operated in harsh conditions - the stained glass windows are constantly hit (in the workshop), but there is not a single damage.

Before that, we did simpler forms, but also large ones.

Here's an example: a bookcase. When we were designing it, we had to solve a lot of problems simultaneously - the bookcase should divide the room into zones + a place for clothes + a secretaire + bookshelves on both sides + the ability to get air from the air conditioner over the bookcase -

Usually we offer the customer to buy the products that we have already made. The story of birth of these products is much the same - we see something and what we see leads to the birth of the idea. Sometimes it happens that the seen picture waits for several years and then suddenly turned into a product. For example, our curtain rods - many have seen drawings by the artist Alphonse Mucha, and we've seen many times. But only two years later suddenly the idea of making curtain rails by changing them a little bit was born. Another year later the idea to make a china shelf, lamps and a coat rack was born. We will not list all such stories. We will show only a few products on a quick way from "was" to "has become".

This was the unfortunate example of an armchair at the Musée d'Orsay -

What did we like about it? - The letter "A." What didn't we like? - Construction.

We know from experience that the angle of the chair back should be ergonomic. Research on this subject was carried out in 1930-1936, i.e. decades after the birth of the chair from the museum. We watch movies and drink tea in the armchair. That's why the back of the armchair must be ventilated. The chair should be soft, with a soft pillow for the head. Armrests should be strictly horizontal, because they put glasses of wine and cups of tea on them. It is clear that the upholstery of an armchair must be sometimes washed, washed or even changed to please the fashion (for new fabrics, to the wallpaper or curtains in the room). And here is our answer - A&O graceful elegant Art Nouveau chair on the verge of Art Deco "Alexandrolovskaya Champagne Saucer with heel", which organically and even elegantly solved all the problems -

One day we received an email with a picture -

The client asked us to make a new product with the shape and dimensions the client wanted. And from a good material. The result of this work is already presented in our showcase -

Later we got a request from the customer -

following the example of such a screen for a radiator. The customer wanted to make several different, but the same product, different sizes -

we made such a series, one of the products of the series

According to the experience of previous works, the "individual order" is carried out as follows

1. the buyer brings to our attention what exactly he wants. We ask a lot of clarifying questions. Often - unexpected (about purpose, temperature, what will be near, what vacuum cleaner, what weight, what size, what color - everything that affects the design)

2. from step 1 become clear about the size and materials required for the purchase, the approximate price

3. deposit. When there's an agreement on item 2, we're ready to accept a down payment of 100USD to 20% of the price of item 2 and start working on the drawings. When the drawings are ready => p.4. The drawings can be complex and there can be a lot of them. In a simple case it can take 2-5 days, in a complicated case a month or two.

4. We show the client the drawings and a view of the model on the screen, in the form of pictures. If the customer approves (dimensions, layout, design solutions) => we are ready to accept a part of the payment to purchase the material. The amount of Item 3 + Item 4 will be equal to 50% of the total order estimate. We receive this payment, buy materials and start making

5. Parts are made, processed. We assemble the product and send the client pictures of the finished product. The client pays the rest of the payment + shipping fee (Russian Post). We receive payment and send the order.

In this logic, we fairly distribute the risks between the customer and us.