From Furniture Making to Bespoke Kitchens: The Award-Winning Designers Creating Kitchens That Feel Like They’ve Always Belonged

Founded by the makers behind award-winning interiors studios Young & Norgate and Made by HUSK, Alderholm brings more than 15 years of furniture-making expertise to bespoke kitchen design – creating kitchens shaped around the architecture, materials and people of each home. 

Alderholm is a new kitchen design studio and workshop founded by Ross Norgate and David Young, bringing together furniture-making craftsmanship and considered interior design to create bespoke kitchens for homes with character.

At the heart of Alderholm is a simple idea: a kitchen should feel as though it belongs to the architecture around it, rather than being imposed upon it.

For Ross Norgate, that philosophy comes from more than 15 years spent designing and making furniture and interiors. His career began in fine furniture-making, training at an internationally renowned woodworking school in Devon before going on to establish Young & Norgate and later Made by HUSK. That grounding in traditional craftsmanship continues to inform the way Alderholm approaches every kitchen.

“I started my career making furniture by hand,” says Ross Norgate, Director and Co-Founder of Alderholm. “I set out to become a craftsman working at the highest level, and that understanding of materials, proportion and how something is made has shaped everything we do. Kitchens were a natural progression because they bring together so many of the principles of furniture-making, but on a much larger scale.”

Rather than treating the kitchen as a separate room or a collection of standardised units, Alderholm approaches each project as a piece of bespoke furniture within the wider architecture of the home. Original features, uneven walls, existing materials and the way a space is actually used all inform the design.

Every Alderholm kitchen is designed, made and installed by the same in-house team in the South of England. This keeps the entire process connected, from the initial conversation and sketches through to the final installation, with designers and makers working closely together throughout.

That continuity is central to Alderholm’s approach. Rather than designing a kitchen and handing its production over to an external manufacturer, the people developing the design understand exactly how it will be constructed. Material choices, joinery, proportions and finishes can therefore be considered as part of one process, rather than as separate stages.

The Alderholm workshop and showroom in Bristol offers an insight into that process. Timber sits alongside samples of doors, finishes and stains, while the same team responsible for designing and making the kitchens works from the space. Clients can see materials being worked with, discuss how different finishes will age and explore how a design could respond to the particular architecture of their home.