The Ship's Compass Table

Some pieces come to us carrying more than their weight. A family brought in a brass ship's compass, gimballed, that had come off their late father's fishing boat — by then the only part of the boat left. They didn't want it boxed away in a cupboard. They wanted it kept where they'd see it, and used.

A compass like that is built to stay level while everything around it pitches and rolls; the gimbal lets the card float true no matter how the boat moves under it. Our job was to give it somewhere to live that honoured how it works. We built a table around it, engineered to cradle the compass and present it at its proper floating angle, set into the piece so it still reads level however you come at it. Nothing forced, nothing pinned flat — it sits the way it was always meant to.

The timber we chose and worked to suit, finished in oil so it can be touched and lived with day to day rather than kept behind glass. The metalwork and the joinery had to agree to the fraction; get the seat wrong and the whole thing looks off.

A memorial you can set your morning coffee down on.

What they've got now is a table that does an ordinary table's job, and holds their dad's compass at its heart while it does it. Most people who sit at it will just see a handsome bit of furniture. The family see the boat.

If you've an object with a story in it that you'd like built into something you can keep and use, we'd like to hear about it.