Cover Kelly Wearstler with the Timbra piano, handcrafted from layered birchwood veneer
Kelly Wearstler with the Timbra piano, handcrafted from layered birchwood veneer
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Los Angeles designer Kelly Wearstler’s first piano, made in collaboration with Cambridge-based British atelier Edelweiss, is a birchwood sculpture that also plays itself
A piano is one of the most precisely engineered objects in domestic life. Kelly Wearstler spent the better part of a collaboration with Cambridge-based manufacturer Edelweiss working within that fact.
Wearstler’s practice has always treated objects as extensions of a larger sensory argument. Her interiors layer art and furniture across eras, periods, and materials held in deliberate tension, and the objects she designs carry the same logic: texture and form doing work that colour alone cannot. Her opulent residential and hospitality projects span Beverly Hills to the Caribbean, earning her a place on Architectural Digest’s AD100, Elle Decor’s A-List and Wallpaper’s Top 20 Designers, among others. Collaborative partners have included Dior, Louis Vuitton, Farrow and Ball and Christofle, and her Substack, Wearstlerworld, quickly became one of the platform’s most-read design titles.
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Above Component parts of the Timbra, including the lid, pedal lyre and legs, at the Edelweiss workshop
Component parts of the Timbra, including the lid, pedal lyre and legs, at the Edelweiss workshop
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Edelweiss, a third-generation family-owned atelier, has spent decades producing bespoke self-playing grand pianos from its Cambridge workshop, handcrafted by a small team using CNC machinery alongside traditional lamination and specialist finishing. The studio had placed Edelweiss instruments in her interior projects for years before the two began talking about making something together. Timbra, on sale from March 2026, is the result.
Here, the designer takes us through the process.
Birchwood components and brass hardware on a workbench at the Edelweiss workshop
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Where did the design process get genuinely difficult, and at what point did the sculpture and the instrument start pulling against each other?
The instrument has non-negotiables. Acoustic integrity, internal structure, proportions that exist for a reason. You can’t move things around just because they’d look better from a certain angle. The engineering is fixed, so every sculptural decision had to be made within these constraints. The depth of knowledge at Edelweiss was invaluable. Having craftspeople who understood every millimetre of the instrument, in the room with us, that’s what allowed us to push the design as far as we did, without losing what mattered. The constraints ended up being generative.
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Above Surface finishing on the Timbra lid at the Edelweiss Cambridge workshop
Above String tuning in progress at the Edelweiss workshop
Surface finishing on the Timbra lid at the Edelweiss Cambridge workshop
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Birchwood feels like a considered choice over other hardwoods. What drew you to it specifically?
The moment you cut into birchwood, it tells you something. It has this quality of revelation. The layering, the markings, the way its character emerges as you work with it. It draws your eye into the material itself, rather than past it. And for a piece whose entire design language centres on visualising sound, that felt exactly right. The grain moves with the form rather than against it. Birchwood is also incredibly workable, which matters when you’re trying to achieve contours that feel inevitable rather than forced. The material and the form ended up in real conversation with each other. That’s what I was looking for.
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A craftsperson at the keyboard during assembly, with the Edelweiss nameplate visible beneath the key cover
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The finishes feel more like a colour edit than a standard palette. How did you arrive at them?
We went through a lot of samples. What I kept coming back to was that the colours had to serve the wood, not compete with it. So I was thinking less about hue and more about saturation. How shifts in intensity can completely change the presence of an object in a room. How the same form reads entirely differently depending on how the finish interacts with the grain underneath it. Each of these colours was chosen to amplify what’s already there. The fluidity of the carved form, the natural character of the birchwood, the way the surface catches light.
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An Edelweiss craftsperson works on the string-and-pin arrangement during assembly
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Edelweiss had already built pieces for your interior projects before this. What changed when the conversation shifted to something you’d both put your names to?
Everything and nothing. The trust was already there. That’s what years of working together build. Placing their instruments in our hotels, understanding how they approach their craft, developing a real shorthand. That foundation is what made this possible. What changes is the nature of the creative conversation. You’re no longer finding the right object for a space; you’re making something together that neither of you could have made alone. That raises the stakes in the best possible way.
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Above Close detail of the Timbra lid’s cross-section, revealing the layered birchwood veneer and its concentric grain markings
Above Looking into the open Timbra, the copper and steel string array framed by the carved birchwood rim
Close detail of the Timbra lid’s cross-section, revealing the layered birchwood veneer and its concentric grain markings
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Above The Timbra piano and stool photographed from the front, Los Angeles
Above The Timbra piano and stool, with the Kelly Wearstler branding visible on the pedal lyre
The Timbra piano and stool photographed from the front, Los Angeles
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The self-playing capability means the piano can perform without anyone at the keys. Does that change how you think about it, and does it move further into artwork territory for you?
It deepens it. A piano in silence already holds a presence in a room. But a piano that can perform on its own, that shifts something. It becomes active. The space around it changes depending on whether it’s playing or still, and both states are completely considered in the design. We thought about Timbra from multiple viewpoints throughout the process. How it reads as a standalone sculptural object. How it changes when someone is seated at it. And now this third state, performing independently. That’s not just a technical feature to me.
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Photography: Giulio Ghirardi
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Jennifer Choo is Regional Managing Editor of Tatler Homes, covering architecture, interior design, and art across Asia. Based in Malaysia, she oversees regional content on luxury residential design and contemporary art collections. Legally trained but choosing to pursue her passion for design, she previously led notable design publications and worked as an interior stylist and art consultant for property developers, design firms, and private clients.
