The O’Grady family
Made by the O’Gradys,
in Poole.
MSO is Matthew Sean O’Grady — a family workshop of architectural joiners, drawing, making and fitting under one roof on the Dorset coast.
I — The name
M · S · O.
The initials are a name: Matthew Sean O’Grady. Matthew and his brother Tom run the workshop today; Sean, their father, is the joiner they learned the trade from. The O’Gradys are a west-coast Irish family — Matt’s grandfather crossed to England as a teenager with a trade in his hands. Three generations on, it is still in the family’s.
Father and son
At the bench, and at the table.
Matt with his father Sean in one of the booths the workshop made for The Kitchen at Chewton Glen, photographed the week the restaurant was finished in 2017. Sean is the joiner Matt learned the trade from, and the workshop still works the way he taught it.
Matt and Sean O’Grady · The Kitchen at Chewton Glen, 2017
Vulneratus non victus“Wounded, not conquered” — the old O’Grady motto, and a fair description of how good joinery is made.
II — From one bench
It started on a single bench.
Today it is a Poole workshop and a team of joiners and cabinetmakers who design, make and fit under one roof — trusted with the joinery for Michelin-kitchen restaurants, five-star hotels and private houses along the Dorset coast. The people who survey your house are the people who set it out on the bench and hang the finished work, so nothing is lost in translation.
III — How we work
One family, one standard, one point of responsibility.
Every commission begins with a survey and a drawing. Nothing leaves the workshop as a stock part; each stair, panel and cabinet is set out for one house and finished to the standard of fine furniture. It is the way Sean taught it, and the way we hand it on.
By appointment
Arrange a consultation.
Tell us about your house and your project. We'll arrange a visit — at your home, or at our workshop and showroom on Allens Lane — to discuss what's possible. No obligation, and no fixed catalogue.
Where we work
Sandbanks · Canford Cliffs · Branksome Park · Poole · Bournemouth · Dorset · The New Forest · Hampshire · and selected projects in London