TRADITIONAL KITCHENS
The sense of security, of warmth and of contact with our past is such a fundamental part of a traditional style that we can easily forget that the perfect traditional kitchen for you is far from a easy one to achieve.
Traditional styles are as broad in their design scope as the history of design. We could be wanting to tie the Kitchen into the period in which the home was constructed, or we could be trying to hark back to an era before the modern kitchen without losing any of the functionality we expect from one. We could be pairing detailed, raised and fielded doors with solid woods and ornamental detailing or we could be trying to echo the Shaker movement with their five part door styles and subtle modernity.
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For this reason, we like to split these sorts of designs into two distinct groups:
TRADITIONALLY & CLASSICALLY INFULENCED KITCHENS
A traditional kitchen design should, quite simply, be following traditions set down in ages past and using them to inform a kitchen design that looks of some yesteryear without sacrificing the modern conveniences we have come to expect whilst ensuring they are concealed within a beautiful, ornamented, and detailed space that feels very much not of the now.
A classically influenced kitchen is one where those concepts and ideas of the past, those traditional ways of doing things, are reinterpreted, referenced and reformed to bring a sense of the past into a modern space, never trying to hide that it is “new” whilst very obviously making callbacks to sometime before.
With range cookers, open plate racks, decorative display cabinetry, pilasters, open shelving, cornice, pelmet, decorative edge mouldings and open butler sinks being key elements in most people’s minds of a Traditional kitchen, we can bring a sense of the past to any room and within the remit of whatever stylistic choices you wish to make.
SHAKER KITCHENS
The shaker movement was a religious, philosophical and, to some degree unintentionally, a design movement that fed into our sense of simple, modern living and became a ubiquitous part of furniture and interior design.
Items like the classic “Ladder back” chair, a line of wall hooks or the five-part shaker door are synonymous with the Shaker movement as is a sense of simplicity, quality and craftsmanship and those values are what we tend to see replicated in a Shake Kitchen.
Most often, the term Shaker Kitchen simply applies to a kitchen that has used a shaker style of door within its design, but I like to try and extend the Shaker style into everything else within the room as much as possible to create harmony and to tie it all together into one coherent design.
The shaker style has, in our opinion, come to be so ubiquitous because, through its service of simplicity and quality, it is flexible enough to be a part more traditional spaces as much as it can be in a more modern room.
What’s really important with shaker as it is with all other styles of kitchen design, is that the room should be designed around you, your style and your requirements.