How to Commission a Piece

A commission goes wrong in the first message or it does not go wrong at all. Almost every bad outcome traces back to a conversation that started with a picture and an adjective instead of a room and a problem.

Bring the constraints, not the solution

The instinct is to arrive with a design. It is more useful to arrive with everything the design has to survive.

• The room. Width, depth, ceiling height. Where the windows and radiators are. Which way the door opens.
• The job. Seats four people who eat slowly. Holds a record collection. Takes a printer and hides the cables. One sentence, specific.
• The access. Narrowest doorway, tightest turn, lift dimensions or stair width. Measuring the doorway and stairwell covers how.
• The deadline, if there is a real one.
• The budget range. Not a number you are embarrassed by. A range stops both sides wasting three weeks.

Photographs of the actual space are worth more than reference images of other people's furniture. A reference image tells a workshop what you like. A photograph of your hallway tells it what it is dealing with.

The three kinds of change

Free, or close to it. Decisions the design already leaves open. The wool colour on the Two-Seat Sofa, one of five. Which way a cabinet door swings. Shelf heights inside a carcass that is already the right size. These are choices the workshop wants from you.

Possible and priced. Changes to dimensions that do not change how a piece carries load. A shorter bench. A cabinet at 800 mm wide instead of 900. These need a new cutting list and often a new jig, and that work is real.

A different object. Deepening a shelf without changing its thickness, lengthening an unsupported span, swapping a structural material. These read like small requests and they are redesigns. A shelf that holds books at 300 mm deep does not simply hold more books at 450 mm. It sags, because the load moves further from the fixing. Shelf load capacity explains the arithmetic.

What is not worth asking for

• A repeat of a sold one-off. If the art on a piece was made once it will not be made again. See what happens when a piece sells out.
• A colour outside the range, for a single piece. Powder coat is bought and run in quantity. One chair in a bespoke colour is mostly the cost of the colour.
• A finish that contradicts the material. High gloss over a cast concrete surface, for instance, shows every pinhole the pour left. The matte sealer on the Drum Table is a decision, not a default.
• Furniture that solves a building problem. If a floor slopes 40 mm across a room, the fix is under the piece, not inside it. Levelling on an uneven floor covers this.

Money, and what it buys at each stage

A commission is usually paid in two parts, and it is worth understanding what the first part is for. It is not a holding fee. It covers the material bought for your order and the drawing time that turned your room into a cutting list. Both of those are spent before anything visible exists, which is precisely why they are paid for up front.

The practical consequence is a line in the process after which changes stop being free. Before material is cut, a change is a conversation. After, it is scrap plus a repeat of the work. Ask where that line is and get the answer in writing, because every dispute about a commission happens on one side or the other of it.

Shipping sits outside the piece price. Delivery runs 38 euros and is included from 1000 euros, and a heavy piece travels on a pallet with a delivery window agreed by phone rather than on a courier network.

What you should expect back

A workshop that is going to do this well will come back with questions before it comes back with a price. Expect to be asked what goes on the piece, who uses it, and whether it ever has to move. Expect at least one of your requirements to be pushed back on.

Before anything is cut you should have the dimensions in writing, the materials and finish named, the price and what it includes, the lead time, and what happens if the piece does not fit. Agreeing all five is fifteen minutes of work that removes the only disputes a commission ever generates. How long made to order takes sets expectations on the fourth one.

The catalogue is a shortcut

Most commissions start because someone could not find the size they needed. It is worth checking twice, because a catalogue piece carries a solved design, a known price and a shorter lead time. The Steel Cabinet at 900 by 450 by 1800 mm with three shelves answers most of what people ask a cabinet commission for.

Reality check

• Lead with constraints: room, job, access, date, budget.
• Photographs of your space beat reference images of someone else's furniture.
• Changes before cutting are cheap. Changes to structure are a redesign.
• Find out where the no-more-changes line sits, and get it in writing.
• Check the catalogue twice. A solved design is faster and cheaper.