Solid stock, never veneer board
Rails and aprons are laminated solid timber, 34 mm minimum, finished in hard-wax oil that can be refreshed at home rather than resprayed.
Hand-built in England · Shipped worldwide
BUILT FOR THE
BUILT FOR THE
FINAL table
Mapmakers Opera is a small atelier of cabinetmakers and chip engineers. We build exclusive poker tables from rare, ethically sourced hardwoods and press clay chip sets carried by your club's own artwork — one commission at a time, never a production line.
- 0Tables delivered
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- 0Years at the bench
- 0Year structural warranty
A workshop that plays the game it furnishes
Mapmakers Opera began as a two-bench joinery serving private card rooms in the North of England. Sixteen years later the same hands still cut every rail. We are not a catalogue brand: each table is drawn for one room, one lighting scheme and one group of players.
Why clubs commission us instead of importing
Mass-market tables are veneered chipboard on folding legs. They cup within two seasons, the rail foam flattens, and the felt pills under a dealer's shuffle. We build in solid, kiln-dried hardwood with floating tops that move with humidity instead of fighting it, so a Mapmakers Opera table looks the same on night one thousand as it did on night one.
Our chip division presses genuine clay composite in-house. That means your club's artwork, edge spots and denominations are ours to control — no minimum order of ten thousand, no six-month factory queue, no colour drift between reorders.
- Single point of contact from first sketch to final fitting
- Timber traceable to certified European and North American mills
- Every commission photographed and archived for future reorders
- Fixed-price quotations — no revisions billed mid-build
Chips pressed under our own roof
Full colour matching, hot-stamped denominations and edge-spot patterns produced from 300 pieces upward, with re-orders guaranteed for a decade.
Room-first design
We measure your card room, model dealer reach and elbow clearance, and size the oval so ten seats never feel like eight.
Ten-year structural warranty
Frames, joints and rail cores are covered for a decade. Cloth and cushions are consumables we re-dress on site at cost.
Services built around a working card room
Four core disciplines, each priced as a fixed quotation and each backed by the same cabinetmaker who signs the underside of your table.
Bespoke table commissions
An oval, round or racetrack table drawn to your room: seat count, rail height, cup-holder pattern, dealer position and cloth colour all specified before a single board is cut.
- CAD drawings and a timber sample box before approval
- Seats 6 to 12, tournament or cash configuration
- Optional dining top that converts the room in seconds
Custom clay chip sets
Your club's crest, colourway and denomination ladder pressed into genuine clay composite, weighted between 10 g and 14 g to the feel your regulars prefer.
- Artwork proofing with physical sample chips
- Edge spots, inlays and UV security marks
- Runs from 300 to 25,000 pieces
Restoration & re-felting
Tired tables — ours or anyone's — stripped, re-cored, re-cushioned and re-dressed in suited speed cloth, usually inside five working days.
- Rail foam replacement and vinyl or leather re-wrap
- Timber repair, re-oiling and hardware renewal
- On-site service for venues that cannot lose a table
Club fit-out & consultancy
Multi-table rooms planned end to end: table spacing, dealer stations, chip banks, lighting temperature, cabinetry and storage for the whole floor.
- Floor plans with circulation and camera sightlines
- Matched cabinetry, chip trolleys and card racks
- Phased delivery so the room keeps trading
Four builds, endlessly specified
Every piece below is a starting point rather than a SKU. Pick the silhouette, then choose the timber, cloth, rail and chip programme that go with it.
The Oratorio — 10-seat oval
Our flagship tournament oval: 2440 × 1170 mm in American walnut, padded armrest in aniline leather, recessed dealer tray and ten flush cup wells.
Walnut · Sapele · Fumed oak — from £6,400The Libretto — 8-seat round
A compact 1520 mm circle for home rooms and private suites. Fumed oak base, magnetic dining lid, and a rail low enough to sit under a standard pendant.
Fumed oak · Maple · Cherry — from £4,150Signature clay chip programme
Genuine clay composite at 10, 11.5 or 14 g, hot-stamped with your denominations and housed in a dovetailed walnut case with a suede-lined lid.
300–25,000 pieces — from £2.10 per chipDealer stations & chip banks
Lockable trolleys, float trays and card racks in matching timber, on braked castors — so the floor's cash handling looks as considered as the tables.
Macassar ebony · Walnut — from £1,890Six stages from first call to first hand
A typical commission runs eight to twelve weeks. You are told the stage you are in every Friday, with photographs from the bench.
- 01
Consultation
A call or site visit to establish seat count, room dimensions, house style and budget. No charge, no obligation.
Day 1–3 - 02
Drawings & samples
Scaled CAD elevations plus a physical box of timber, cloth and leather samples posted to you.
Week 1–2 - 03
Fixed quotation
One price covering materials, build, finish, delivery and fitting. Locked for 60 days.
Week 2 - 04
Bench build
Timber selected, frame jointed, rail cored and wrapped, cloth stretched. Weekly photographs sent.
Week 3–9 - 05
Chips & finishing
Chip artwork pressed and hot-stamped, hard-wax oil laid, hardware fitted, table play-tested in the workshop.
Week 9–11 - 06
Delivery & fitting
Blanket-wrapped transport, assembly in your room, levelling, and a care briefing for your staff.
Week 12
Aftercare services that keep a room trading
Delivery is the middle of the relationship, not the end. These programmes run for the life of the table.
Annual service visit
A technician re-levels the table, tightens hardware, checks rail integrity and refreshes the oil finish in a single evening call-out.
Included free in year oneCloth replacement programme
Suited speed cloth swapped on a schedule you set — annually for busy clubs, every three years for private rooms — at a fixed member rate.
From £180 per tableChip reorder guarantee
Your artwork, moulds and colour formulas archived for ten years, so a top-up run in 2033 matches the set you took in 2026.
10-year archiveTournament hire
Short-term rental of matched tables, dealer stations and chip banks for festivals and charity events, delivered and collected by our own crew.
Weekend ratesEngraving & commemoratives
Winner plaques, brass rail inlays and commemorative chip runs for house champions and anniversary events.
Two-week turnaroundStorage & relocation
Climate-controlled storage during refits, plus dismantling and reinstallation when your room moves address.
Insured transportStanding discounts, published openly
We would rather post our reductions than haggle them. These four run every year and can be combined up to a maximum of 25% off the quoted build price.
Winter bench season
Commissions confirmed between January and March are built in our quietest months and carry a 15% reduction on the table price.
Every year · Jan–MarMulti-table rooms
Order three or more tables in one fit-out and every table after the second is discounted by 10%, dealer stations included.
Always availableTable & chip bundle
Pair any table commission with a custom chip run of 500 pieces or more and the chip programme drops by 12%.
Always availableReturning clubs
Every client on our archive keeps a standing 8% on restorations, re-felting and reorders — for as long as the club exists.
LifetimeCharity tournaments and registered members' clubs: ask about our community rate when you enquire.
Join the bench
Come and make things that outlast you
We are a team of eleven — cabinetmakers, an upholsterer, two chip technicians, a draughtsman and the people who answer the phone. We hire slowly, train properly and pay above the regional trade average. If you would rather finish one excellent table than assemble forty average ones, talk to us.
- Cabinetmaker (full-time) — solid timber experience, hand-cut joinery preferred.
- Upholstery apprentice — no experience needed, three-year indentured training.
- Chip production technician — colour matching and press operation, full training given.
- Installation driver — UK and EU delivery, Cat C licence, weekends off.
Recent commissions
A selection from the archive. Filter by the timber that carried the build.
What the rooms say
★★★★★"Four years of six-night-a-week play and the rail is as tight as the day it landed. We stopped budgeting for table replacement entirely."
Daniel WhitcombeFloor Manager, Deansgate Card Room
★★★★★"They redrew the oval twice because the dealer couldn't reach seat nine comfortably. Nobody bills you for that kind of care — they just did it."
Priya RaghunathanOwner, The Cellar, Soho
★★★★★"Our chip reorder three years later was indistinguishable from the original run. That alone is worth the relationship."
Marcus FeldtTournament Director, Riverside Casino
★★★★★"A dining lid that actually looks like furniture. My wife approved the table before I did, which is the only review that mattered."
Oliver GrantPrivate client, Ashford House
Before you enquire
Eight to twelve weeks from approved drawings for a single table. Multi-table fit-outs are phased so your room never closes; we will give you a written schedule with the quotation.
American walnut, sapele mahogany, fumed and natural oak, cherry, birdseye maple and Macassar ebony are held in stock. Anything else can be sourced through our mills — expect two to four extra weeks and a quotation adjustment.
300 pieces for a custom-pressed clay set with your own artwork. Below that we can hot-stamp our house blanks with your crest, which reaches the same look at a lower entry point.
Yes — we have fitted tables in 27 countries. European deliveries travel in our own blanket-wrapped van with our fitters; further afield we crate and appoint a vetted installer, or fly a fitter out at cost.
Almost always. Send photographs of the rail, the underside and any damage, and we will quote for stripping, re-coring, re-cushioning and re-dressing. Only badly water-damaged chipboard cores are beyond saving.
Ten years on frames, joinery and rail cores against failure in normal club use. Cloth, cushion foam and leather are wearing parts, replaced on our aftercare programme at member rates.
40% on approval of drawings, 40% when the frame is complete and photographed, 20% on satisfactory fitting. Bank transfer or card. The quoted price is fixed once approved.
Get in touch
Tell us about your room
Send the shape of the space, the number of seats you need and roughly when you would like to play on it. We reply to every enquiry within one working day with an honest indication of price and lead time — before anyone asks you to commit to anything.
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- Commissions
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- Careers
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- Workshop
- 5 Torrington Gardens
Thingwall, Wirral
England, CH61 7US - Bench hours
- Mon–Fri, 08:00–18:00 · Sat by appointment