The idea for Specificity grew from our own experiences of trying to find individual pieces of furniture and accessories for our own homes.
Tastes and trends come and go, and naturally as we became older we began to move away from the pull of current mass produced furniture, and felt the allure of the mid-century furniture we remembered in our childhood homes and upcycled pieces similar to those of our grandparents.
We started searching for those special pieces that only a few years ago we would not have given house room, and updated them to make them ‘one of a kind’. We found this very enjoyable, taking something currently undesirable and improving upon it, to the point that it has become an obsession. We simply can’t hold on to everything we create, and that is how our shop was born.
How we chose the name is a completely different story… We still can’t pronounce it correctly.

Our process begins with finding a piece of furniture that is in need of being rescued that has something ‘special’ about it. It can be that it is made particularly well, has nice details or shape, or that it still has a trace of what it once was and could be again.
We would then clean and strip the piece, salvage any re-useable parts, and make necessary repairs, for example re-glueing joints or replacing drawer bottoms.
We try to make every piece of furniture that we update different from the last, and what we do is dictated by the piece itself. For example, we would avoid painting a mid-century piece unless the veneer was damaged beyond economical repair. We would rather see a beautiful painted piece of furniture going to a new home rather than a tatty original one go into landfill.
Our aim is not to make old furniture look brand new, it is to find a balance between retaining its charm and history and making it useful again for modern living

If you are interested in purchasing our work then all currently available pieces are listed in the Vintage section of our shop.
Other examples of our work are included in the Gallery, and our blog titled Found and Rescued is aimed at documenting our process for some pieces as they evolve.
You can also keep in touch via our social media links.