About Us
Cabbages & Kings is basically a one-man/one-woman show based in the lovely English Lakes and we work from an old grain store in the same village in which we live.
Rob Fairweather has been involved with wood for most of his life, a career that started by serving a long apprenticeship constructing beautiful wooden sailing boats, commissioned for leisure sailing, professional racing and navigating the globe.
Sailing
The move from boats to furniture was simple, after years of constructing boats hulls, which are curved in just about every direction; furniture made from straight bits of wood seemed relatively straightforward!
It was while developing furniture for outdoor use that we discovered a love for green oak. It's so fresh and new and clean and the way in which it moves and takes on its own shape as it dries is amazing.
Siobhan was brought up with timber; her father ran his own carpentry business, so chopping up timber, making things and lumping heavy things around has always been second-nature. Both of us take pleasure in making the sofas and Siobhan has a keen eye for design and detail and seems to know what 'looks' right and what doesn't. Neither of us, it seems, enjoys doing our accounts or is terribly good at getting out of bed early, but then we all have our bad points?
By the way in case you were wandering, and many do, where the name 'Cabbages & Kings' comes from, it is taken from the poem 'The Walrus and the Carpenter' from 'Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There' by Lewis Carroll 1872.
Just one of the eighteen verses of quite a sad tale
"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax—
Of cabbages--and kings—
And why the sea is boiling hot—
And whether pigs have wings."