Rocco Interiors

Rocco Interiors was recently commissioned to undertake a major piece for a private client in Brighton, Victoria. Doubly daunting due to the pieces complexity was the fact that the client was a well known interior designerand the piece was for her place!
We began by working through a scratch plan with the client and determined that the piece would be 3000mm high and 1300mm wide and 480mm deep. It would be made from solid fruitwood.
The sides of the piece were to consist of twelve floating, fielded panels aside all pinned – 24 in all all cut and placed by hand.
The same floating panel process was used for the lower panels of each door. In the upper panels we had two panels of hand woven brass wire made by a company in Dandenong. Unfortunately the wire was laminated and so deemed too bright to be used. This problem was resolved by dipping the wire in caustic soda followed by fuming it in a tent of amonia. After a day and a night in the tent, our wire looked about 200 years old.
The piece was made by Mark Martin and took 26 days. It then took Mark Entwistle 8 days to age, polish and fit the hardware which was supplied by Graham Brown Antiques in Malvern.
A final coat of beeswax before our carrier, George Graham arrived to pick up the vitrine for delivery to our client. The finished piece was stunning and our client was delighted.

In Rural France there is a strong tradition of building tilt top, wine or Vignerons tables as they are commonly known. Materials used in construction tended to be French oak, wild cherrywood, baltic pine and often a combination of all three.

Earlier last year director of Rocco Interiors in Melbourne, Christopher Rimmer, imported two original versions of the classic Vignerons table from France. The design we came up with for our version was a combination of design elements from both of these pieces.

We decided to use one principal timber for construction and chose cherrywood although, we will offer this piece to the public in French oak as well.

The round top measures 1 metre but can be changed according to requirements. The top is supported by a turning y shaped lyre through tenoned into a cross stretcher which has flat plinths at either end.
This make the table very portable yet very stable at the same time.
The new French Provincial Vignerons table is currently on the floor of Rocco Interiors and we invite you to inspect this beautiful piece.
By the way the bottle of Bordeaux pictured was consumed and enjoyed on the day we finished building the table! Salut!

Rocco Interiors is pleased to announce the design of a new French Provincial circular table. To be known as the Empire Cannon legged table, this piece was designed by Christopher Rimmer in 2008 and will be available in fruitwood or French oak. We have produced a 1.5m sample in fruitwood which currently is on display in the front showroom of Rocco Interiors, 407 Hampton Street, Hampton, Australia. The Empire canon legged table will be available in any size.

The New Empire Canon Legged Table From Rocco Interiors
The base of the table features a set of shaped plinths arranged in a Maltese cross configuration from which four hand turned stems protrood suppporting another, larger Maltese cross which, in turn, supports the table top.

Detail of Base
The surface of the Empire Cannon Legged Table is simple yet elegant and features a reverse bullnosed edge and a thin string of exotic timber which traces the circumfrance of the table top about 10cm in from the edge.
Should the table be ordered in fruitwood, we will opt for satinwood stringing which is lighter than fruitwood and creates a pleasing contrast. In the case of a table ordered in oak, we use 6000 year old Irish bog oak which produces a jett black line around the surface of the table. In truth though, either may be used with good results.
After a few fits and starts experienced obtaining this incredibly rare timber, we have secured enough to produce a couple of dozen tables. Incidently ancient bog oak sells for US$18000.00 per square meter – and that’s assuming you can find it!

Surface Detail Showing Edging and Satinwood Striging Against Fruitwood.
If you are intending on having your Christmas dinner around this table, or any table from Rocco Interiors for that matter, you will need to order soon. The return in confidence in the economy has seen our books rapidly filling with orders all due prior Christmas.
We are certain that the new Empire Cannon Legged Table will prove a popular addition to our range of circular tables which also include the Roulette and the Bouchons, a feature on which is available elsewhere on this blog.

On behalf of the management and staff of Rocco Interiors, I€™d like to welcome you to our new website. We trust you will enjoy browsing this redesigned and completely updated Rocco Interiors website and accompanying blog site.

Whilst our previous website proved enormously popular with our customers and introduced our furniture designs and decorative art collections to the world it was, in truth, built around old technology and couldn€™t be easily updated. Our partners at John Ryan Design who designed and built this beautiful new Rocco Interiors website, have also built an extensive content management system which accompanies it and enables our stock to be updated wherever and whenever we choose. Gone are the days of falling in love with an item on the website only to find it sold months ago when you call the shop.
This blog will serve to keep our customers up to date with what is happening at the shop and in the studio and I€™ll be making posts from my travels around the world in search of special pieces to bring back for sale at Rocco Interiors, commencing with my return to Africa in search of tribal art later this year.
I believe that the furniture we produce at Rocco Interiors to be amongst the finest available anywhere in the world. This isn€™t a boast, but a simple fact based on years of observation of quality trends in the industry. Rocco Interiors is not a one man show, by any means, and I work alongside many talented and dedicated crafts people who have made the business what it is today, I hope to introduce them to you and show you some of the special work they do within the pages of this blog.
So welcome again, and please let me know if we can be of service to you now or in the future.
Warm Regards,
Christopher Rimmer