The team
And Dai, Ioan and Steffan make it and carry it in. There are five of us at the Old Mill, and whoever made your table is probably one of the two who bring it.
Founder and maker
Rhodri served his time as a joiner on Carmarthenshire farm buildings, and then spent eight years making church furniture before taking on the lease of the Old Mill in 1998. He still cuts the dovetails on the Welsh dressers himself, chooses the boards in the barn and draws every commission by hand. He will tell you which of his early tables he would like to have back.
Showroom and measure-ups
Mari trained in interior design at Swansea and spent a decade telling people that their rooms were smaller than they thought. She runs the showroom, does the measure-ups across West Wales and wrote the room planner rules on the back of a delivery note: 45 centimetres to sit, 45 more to walk. She has talked more people out of an eight-seater than anybody living.
The Old Mill
The mill on Station Road ground corn for the farms along the Tywi until the early sixties, and then stood empty for a long time. Rhodri took on the lease in 1998, mainly because it had a good dry barn. The mill wheel shaft still runs across the showroom ceiling.
The barn across the yard holds about two years of oak drying in stacks, boards from Welsh and Marches woodland, stickered so the air can get through. Nothing is cut until it has had its two years.
The room planner draws it to scale in a few seconds, or Mari will come out with a tape for £45, taken off the price of the piece.