Riva Solid Walnut Entryway Bench

Details

Riva sits low and runs long, and the thing you notice first is the gap. Between the flat walnut rail that carries the seat and the bowed stretcher underneath it, a single closed opening stretches almost the full length of the bench, narrow at both ends and widest in the middle, shaped like a lens laid on its side. It hollows out everything below the seat, so what reaches your eye is two thin lines of wood with the floor showing through between them.

The surface carries a polished sheen, not a matte one. Light lands on the rail as one long bright band and travels along it as you cross the room, then picks up again on the outer face of the legs. Those legs splay away from the body and taper as they drop, ending in a spear point that barely meets the floor. Neither one is a squared post cut to length.

Walnut with red in it

The tone runs warmer than most walnut, closer to russet than to dark chocolate, and it deepens wherever the light rakes across it. At the joins, where a leg sweeps up into the rail, the figured grain curls and turns back on itself instead of running straight. That is what happens when a shape is taken out of solid stock rather than built up around a core: no seam shows at the turn, and no hardware.

This is where the price of a walnut bench goes. A veneered frame cannot follow this line: the face has to be bent around a form, and the pattern flattens at the tightest part of the curve. Riva is solid walnut throughout.

The cushion, and the ledge past it

The seat pad is a separate piece resting on top of the rail rather than dropping into it. It is a woven cushion with corded piping around the edge and a seam running its length, and it overhangs the front of the rail slightly, so the walnut reads as a shelf carrying the seat, not a box built around it.

At each end the rail continues past the cushion and flattens into a small end ledge. Enough room for a vase, a folded scarf, a set of keys as you come through the door.

Mehmet Ali makes it himself

Mehmet Ali was born in Konya and has spent more than thirty-five years working with wood. He shapes every piece that leaves the workshop, and the workshop has been running far longer than the two years we have been selling mirrors and benches out of it.

Nothing is built ahead of time. Your Riva is started once the order is placed, in the length you ask for, and it will carry the color and the figure of the boards it came from rather than matching these photographs exactly.

Choosing a length

Seven sizes, from 100 x 32 cm up to 250 x 38 cm, roughly 39 inch long at the short end and 98 inch at the long one. The depth moves only a few centimeters across that whole range, so the bigger sizes never become deeper seats. They keep drawing the same low line further along the wall. Measure the wall in your entryway and leave a little clear at each end, so the tapered feet are not crowded. If two lengths both look possible, send us the measurement.

After it leaves the workshop

Orders have reached around twenty countries. Your bench is wrapped in protective material for the journey and shipped worldwide with a tracking number. Keep the walnut away from damp, wipe it with a soft dry cloth, and lift the cushion off now and then to dust the rail underneath.

Riva sits on its own under Walnut Benches for now. If the darker, faintly red wood feels like too much weight for a small hallway, Tara draws the same low line in pale oak, with a run of almond-shaped voids under the seat rather than one long opening.