Steamer Trading Next we travelled south to one of themany historicmarket towns our beautiful countryside has to offer. Still displaying a serious amount of history and quaint old fashioned charm, Guildford is not a natural partner for our next store opening.
Home to a former branch of HSBC, the new Steamer Trading premises are anything but traditional. Designed and built by one of the country’s coolest private residence architects,Mark Guard Architects has given this building a seriously contemporary exterior and suitably fitting dynamic interior that really stands out fromthe crowd.
Ironically until Steamer’s state of the art Guildford store was launched, its own heritage was steeped in tradition. In fact it got its name fromits first site, the old Steamer Inn in the pretty village of Alfriston, Sussex. That was 25 years ago and since then they have built up an empire of 20 other all equally quaint stores around the country. So this departure is something of a surprise.
Not only do they have an exceptionally stylish product offer and a well merchandised interior, but the ultramodern all glass and steel cube shaped frontage, that encases the store, is a wonderful piece of architecture in its own right. Apparently the pane of glass used is the second largest commercial piece of glass in the UKmeasuring 5.3metres high. Right at the heart of the store is the formidable staircase. Bold in formand contemporary in design, it takes up a fair amount of space and adds to the quality inherent in this store. This sleek structure rises up to two more floors and down one and is a fabulously extravagant feature.
Altogether this Steamer outlet verges on the sublime and is exceedingly cutting edge – if you pardon the pun for they sell themost expansive range of cutting and stabbing implements you could ever imagine. Everything from reasonably priced to totally extortionate, they know their knives and everything else to do with cooking for that
18 sdea directory of shopfittings and display
www.shopdisplay.org
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