The Art of Travel

There is something inescapably romantic about the idea of an old-fashioned travel trunk. They conjure an EM Forster-ish world of porters hauling them up gangplanks, and absurdly overloaded and top-heavy old motorcars rattling through the dust in far-flung colonial outposts. Or indeed, for some of us, a remembrance of boarding-school days, wherein beaten-up trunks and tuck-boxes, often handed on from previous generations, found inevitable other uses as bedsit coffee tables and seating. They are no longer required kit, I’m told, and that means, in the most part, that the trunk has passed well and truly into the world of the antique. Indeed, in the Bentley’s antiques shop on Pimlico Road – a stone’s throw from Boisdale of Belgravia – you’ll find beautifully-made vintage examples from the likes of Louis Vuitton, Goyard and Moynat, luxury marques that were first established as the most celebrated makers of bespoke trunks.

Unlikely as it may seem, however, there’s a new name to add to that tradition, based not in the ateliers of Paris, but in a forest a few miles outside Edinburgh. Method Studio, founded by master cabinetmaker Callum Robinson and his wife Marisa Giannasi, a designer and former architect, occupies a picturesque former sawmill in the Bathgate Hills. Here, surrounded by citrus spruce forests planted a century ago, the couple and their small team have spent the past few years producing all manner of elegant, minutely handmade artefacts: furniture, cabinets, drinks cases, watch boxes and other objets, most of it bespoke, and mostly using local, storm-blown timber. As well as private projects, these have included commissions for the likes of Burberry, Jaguar, Bentley and Vacheron Constantin, much of it inspired by the style and feel of old-fashioned, portable cabinets and trunks.