Holt & Vane is a kitchen workshop. We do not assemble units. We draw a kitchen as a measured set, cut and join it in solid timber on the bench, paint it by hand, and fit it ourselves. Made to order means made for one room, one set of dimensions, by one set of hands.
A kitchen is not specified from a brochure. It is drawn, cut, and joined for one room - and the people who draw it are the people who build it.
Most fitted kitchens are ordered as a list of carcasses, delivered flat, and assembled on site by whoever turns up. The drawing, the build and the fit are three different hands, and the idea quietly loses something at each handover.
We hold all three. Every Holt & Vane kitchen begins as a measured elevation on the drawing table and stays on the bench in our own workshop until it is right. The maker who pencils the line cuts the joint and hangs the door. Nothing is outsourced, and nothing leaves until it is true.
Every kitchen runs the same five-line specification, from the first measured survey to the last handle hung. Each line is signed off before the next begins.
We measure the room as it truly is - walls out of square, service runs, floor falls, the lot. A kitchen built to the room beats a room forced around a kitchen, so the survey is where the whole drawing starts.
Your kitchen is drawn by hand as scaled elevations and sections, every cabinet and joint set out before a board is cut. We bring real timber, stone and paint to the table so you hold the finishes, not a screen render.
Carcasses and doors are cut from solid timber on our own bench, drawers dovetailed, frames mortised. No flat-pack panel, no third-party shop. The same maker stays with a kitchen from board to finished run.
Doors and frames are hand-painted in several brushed coats, in a colour mixed for your kitchen and repairable for life. Brass is aged or brushed to taste. The finish is the slow part, and it is the part you live with.
Our own fitters install the kitchen, set the worktops and hang every handle, scribing to the room until each line is square and true. We do not leave until the last detail is checked off the sheet.
A made-to-order kitchen takes time, and we say so plainly. From the first survey to the fitted room is usually a handful of months, and we take on a measured number of kitchens at once so that every one has a maker across it the whole way.
A bespoke kitchen earns its keep over decades, so we build it from things that age into the room rather than out of it. Solid timber over veneer, real stone, paint that can be touched up, brass that softens with handling. The discipline is in what we leave out: four or five materials, resolved properly, outlast a dozen.
Every commission begins as a tray of these on the table, so you can hold the kitchen in your hand before it is ever on the wall.
Rich straight grain, oiled to a low sheen and left to deepen with age.
For interiors and shelving, worked solid and finished to feel under the hand.
Brushed in several coats, in a bespoke colour, repairable for the life of the kitchen.
Cups, knobs and bar handles in unlacquered brass that wears in rather than out.
Bone-toned, matt and warm underhand, cut and finished to the worktop drawing.
For pastry slabs and feature tops, selected by the slab and book-matched where it counts.
Dovetailed drawers and mortised frames, the joints drawn to be looked at.
The soft details - lined drawers, ceramic sinks - specified to sit quietly with the rest.
Each begins from the room and the people in it, so no two share a drawing. A handful of recent commissions across London and the Cotswolds, captioned the way we file them.
A working island drawn as the centre of an open kitchen, the oiled-walnut run topped in a single honed limestone slab and set out to give a clear pass on every side.
A drawer front read at arm's length, so the joint had to earn it. Hand-cut dovetails in solid walnut with a single brushed cup pull, drawn to be seen as much as used.
A full-height larder built as one piece, oiled walnut outside and pale oak within, a honed marble pastry slab set at working height and brass-fronted spice drawers cut into the carcass. Drawn, joined and fitted as a single commission.
Imagery illustrates the studio's materials and joinery. It is not a record of completed commissions.
Before a single board is cut, your kitchen exists as a measured drawing - every elevation, every section, every joint set out at scale. It is slower than a configurator, and that is the point: a line corrected on paper costs a rubber, the same line corrected on the wall costs a kitchen.
You see the whole thing drawn, you hold the materials it is drawn in, and only then does it go to the bench.
The maker who draws your kitchen is the maker who joins and fits it. No handover, no being passed around, one person answerable for the result.
We give you the cost early, in plain terms, and design to it. The number on the drawing is the number you pay, not a starting bid that grows on site.
Solid timber, real stone and a hand-mixed paint that can be touched up. A Holt & Vane kitchen is made to be lived in hard and to still read right in twenty years.
They drew the kitchen we could not put into words, then built it tighter than the drawing. Two years in, every drawer still runs true and the brass has come up beautifully.
Sophie · Victorian terrace, north London
Every commission starts with a measured conversation and a look at the room. Send a few lines about the space and what you are hoping for, and we will arrange the first visit. There is no charge to talk it through.