Spirit of Chartwell Ship

Our initial brief for this project was to produce a set of drawings for furniture and cabin layouts for quotation by carpenters, however our involvement expanded greatly as the complete refit of the Spirit of Chartwell progressed. The ship’s owner asked us to be based in Holland and oversee the strip-out of the old interior and to be his representative in the shipyard during the refurbishment. As well as handling day to day issues which arose in the shipyard, we worked on the design for many areas of the ship’s interior, such as cabins, bathrooms, saloon/bar, galley and sundeck.
	The design concept is inspired by the luxury Orient Express trains, and has many similar details such as mahogany woodwork, marquetry and Lalique crystal panels. The client also had many antique and reclaimed fixtures and fittings which we incorporated into the scheme. During the course of the project we produced hundreds of drawings in order to communicate the concepts for the design to the contractors, suppliers and the shipyard.
We also sourced local suppliers of many fixtures and fittings, including five metre square parasols for the sun deck. In total, we stayed in Holland for 8 months, and by the end of the project we were involved in most aspects of the refit, either designing or overseeing. The Spirit of Chartwell was recently used as the Royal Barge in the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Pageant on the River Thames in June 2012.