Cut an oak tree through the middle and you will find its history written in rings. A light, thin band for every summer with plenty of rain. A dark, dense band for every hard winter. Dendrochronologists, scientists who date the past from tree rings, can read droughts and volcanic eruptions back to the Stone Age in the same pattern.

Oak grows slowly, often less than a centimetre a year, and that is exactly what gives it its weight. Every ring is compressed time. A dark oak table is therefore not just a piece of furniture; it is a slice of decades, pressed into something you can lay your hand on.

The dark colour often comes from the wood having lain close to the ground or being fumed in the old way, a technique that goes back to the Viking Age, when dark wood was used for whatever had to last longest. The darkness is not a surface. It sits in the fibre itself.

When we build with dark oak, we therefore work more slowly than with most other materials. It is a respect for how long the wood itself has taken to become ready.