Custom craftspeople and yacht designers collaborate any given day of the week. They cooperate on behalf of superyacht owners who are the design studio’s clients. Recently, Silverlining and Winch Design teamed up for a special piece of furniture. But, it’s for quite a different customer for Winch Design: itself. What’s more, the project started with a mere pebble.
Forty-year-old Silverlining fuses age-old handcraftsmanship with cutting-edge technologies like 3D printing in its own design studio and workshop. Winch Design, of course, has been designing interiors, plus handling exterior styling, for 39 years. The two have been working together for the better part of three decades as well.

This particular collaboration started with something that Michael Noah, an Architecture and Yachts associate at Winch Design, sees daily in the office. It’s a pebble that Andrew Winch, the studio founder, put on his desk when he joined the studio. “More than a keepsake, it was a spark of inspiration,” Noah says. In fact, “I’ve always dreamed of creating something meaningful from it. As we moved into our new studio, the time felt right to bring this vision to life.”
Blending design with sustainability is a key driver for Winch Design, as it is for Silverlining. That made narrowing down the potential materials simpler. Specifically, they selected Portuguese cork for the pebble-shaped base. Additionally, English olive ash wood and American black walnut pair with it. Both woods are FSC-certified (Forestry Stewardship Council), confirming each came from responsibly managed forests. Cork comes from the cork oak tree, a native tree primarily in Portugal and Spain. Notably, cork increasingly absorbs harmful gases from the air the more harvesters cut it. By some estimates, harvested trees can absorb three to five times more carbon dioxide than unharvested trees because stripping stimulates regeneration.

Additionally, “Cork, though often overlooked, is a high-performance natural material with exceptional durability,” Mark Boddington, Silverlining’s founder and chairman, says. “Its inherent qualities—water resistance, hypoallergenic, and antimicrobial properties—make it an invaluable resource for marine design.”
Although the table may appear to be a solid block of cork, it’s actually layered segments. The texture and density gradually change from bottom to top as well, to bring out the tactile nature. Finally, Silverlining and Winch Design landed on a sustainable approach to bring out the natural grains of the woods. Plant-based oil finishes the olive ash and black walnut.

“This coffee table is more than just a piece of furniture,” Noah insists. “It’s a legacy of Andrew’s inspiration and a reflection of how small moments can spark ideas and creativity.” Certainly, it may spark further ideas and creativity for superyacht customers, too.
Silverlining silverliningfurniture.com
Winch Design winchdesign.com
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