St Georges Chapel, Windsor Castle - Nave and Choir Furniture
Treske, in conjunction with the Dean and Chapter of the College of St George and Martin Ashley, Architect and Surveyor to the Fabric, designed and then made the new choir stalls and clergy furniture for services within the Nave of St Georges Chapel, Windsor Castle.
The furniture was delivered in September 2022 just before Queen Elizabeth II died at Balmoral. Chairs and readers from the overall set of furniture were used at the high altar for Her Majesty’s committal service. Treske is honoured and proud to have been involved at such a moment in British history.
Each of the seventy-seven items of furniture has been designed to fit with the incredible vertical nature of the building and are finished in colours to blend with, rather than stand out against, this background.
The furniture is made in solid oak apart from the central panels on the readers, lecterns and chair backs, where matched oak veneers have been used for stability and to achieve a homogeneous look across the furniture. All the panels have a solid top and bottom to help durability for when the furniture is moved.
The furniture consisted of the altar, credence table and lectern. Seating and readers for the Clergy and Military Knights, and Junior Choristers and Lay Clerk curved choir stalls and bench seating. A music stand for the Director of Music and a sound control desk completed the furniture items.
The initial design hand drawings followed detailed discussions and revisions before becoming computer aided drawings that enabled further design refinement. Once finalised these drawings were turned into workshop drawings that could be used by the wood machinists and cabinet makers using some of the latest technology. Fine detail such as the finger joints were to tight engineering tolerances often to 1/100ths of a millimetre to achieve the required accuracy. Details such as each of the curved choir readers being subtly but accurately coned, and not flat, became important to avoid a visual wave effect when put together, which would have detracted from the intended verticality of the design.
The commission was funded by the Canadian Bray Fellowship whose Bray hemp comb badges are found on the Canon in Residence’s chair and at the end of the Chorister rows. The Garter badge is shown on the Dean’s chair, and as with the Bray badges is etched into brass that has been patinated to a bronze finish.
Photographs of the committal service are stills taken from the coverage of the funeral by the BBC.
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