A Gentleman's Pub

I like to imbibe once in a while, I enjoy it even better when I can do it with a few of my friends. My drink of choice... probably beer. My watering hole of choice... my living room. I assume that most people prefer drinking at home, in the company of friends. Well in the same vein but in a slightly different scale, a client I had the pleasure of working with decided that he was going to build a real pub ... in his home! I was fortunate to be able to work with the elusive James Northey on this remarkable project. 

My task was to design and fabricate the rail portion of the bar top. It seems such a small task compared to the rest of the pub, but I felt honoured and a little nervous to be asked to do this. I was nervous because I had never done anything like this before. I was embarking on an entirely new voyage... like I do everyday I guess.  I also knew that as small as my part was it was critical to the comfort of "patrons" in the bar. Many secrets and stories would be told over my humble contribution.

After our initial consultation it seemed like I was forgotten, or maybe left to do what I do best.  So I set about looking for some leather. I found the perfect piece of brown bull hide, probably the brother of Islero. For this project I needed two hides! the bar was over 18 feet long in total, and becasue of the complexity of the cutting there was a great deal of wastage.

Above you can see the magnificent hide, almost 3/8" thick the bullhide presents many challenges... cutting being one of them.

Once the pieces are cut we need to skive all the edges. being 3/8" thick the leather is too heavy to sew and to comfortably articulate over the foam bar rail. To make life easier we skive or remove some of the thickness, by trimming with this machine. Our good friend Chester is a master skiver and is happy to assist us when we need it.

You can see the leather below has been skived to 1/8" thick, much better.

Some of the leather needed to be manually skived... Olfa Knife!

Below you can see the bar top as it was during fitting, I had to make sure that the pieces were cut properly before I upholstered the bar.

I sewed the end cap together to test the fit, not bad, it did require a little adjustment, the thickness of the leather is clearly apparent here.

Sewing the leather together and fitting it in reverse. This allows me to ascertain where if anywhere the leather needs alteration. Not to toot my own horn or anything... it didn't.

The leather stretched and stapled. The foam I used was contour cut, and ultra rigid, with a soft plush layer glued over top for comfort.

Here you can see the completed bar top... It turned out really nice!

Here is the bar top in place, the marble looks magnificent next to the leather. I was quite proud of my stitching.

Here is the bar in place inside the pub. Yes I know. And the women are indeed hand carved... :)

A view towards the ceiling with one of the light fixtures visible. The incredible ornamental application, the gilding, hand painting etc were all carried out by the incredible team of decorators from Colin Griffinson.