We’re featuring some some of the great pieces of furniture that our students made this year, and how a professional course at the Chippendale school can lead to a rewarding career.

This year, we’ve several times raised an issue that’s close to our hearts – why do so many young people feel that they have to leave school and go onto university?

Okay for those who want to study law or medicine or the sciences.  But many university graduates are simply obtaining a degree that they’ll never put to good use.

For those with a creative streak, and a desire to work with their hands, we’d like the option of fine furniture making to be more prominent.

So we’re always delighted when students do come to us straight from school, particularly when one of them, Isaac Young from Suffolk, wins our coveted Best Design Award.

His winning piece was a drinks cabinet that looks like the kind of safe that a bank would keep its money in overnight, but which is actually a not-so-safe wooden imitation that, with a turn of the opening handles, reveals itself to be a drinks cabinet.

Isaac’s first project was a walnut and olive ash sideboard cabinet comprising well over 400 precisely cut pieces of walnut fixed to a flexible backing of artists’ canvas.

Another of his creations was an elegant pedestal table in lustrous solid American black walnut, finished off with a coating of Danish oil – a project that only took him four days to complete.

His drinks cabinet safe comprises MDF veneered with wenge wood, a dark wood that lends a striking pattern and patina to the piece, and inside the door are CNC wooden gears which release the safe’s security rods and allow the door to be opened – with an interior LED light that automatically clicks on and off.

Isaac had some woodworking experience before coming to us, having a father who is a keen amateur woodworker, but what he has accomplished at the school has been inspiring – proving that you can be a great cabinetmaker at any age.

Isaac has now returned to Ipswich in Suffolk and has opened his own furniture and cabinet making business, Osbourne & Young.