The Rolls-Royce Phantom flagship sedan turns 100 this year. To commemorate the occasion, Rolls-Royce is creating a Private Collection that incorporates three new woodworking techniques that the company’s artisans have never used before.
Rolls-Royce has been pushing the limits of its creativity and craftsmanship, which explains why 2024 was its busiest year for Bespoke builds. The 1-of-1 Phantom Goldfinger honored the 1964 James Bond movie with several custom elements and references. The Phantom Extended Cherry Blossom featured the company’s first use of 3D sculptural embroidery. Most recently, Rolls-Royce created its first-ever hand-painted Starlight Headliner for the space-themed Cullinan Cosmos one-off.
For the Private Collection, Rolls-Royce’s craftspeople spent a year developing wood interior panels made with three firsts for the company: 3D marquetry, 3D ink layering, and gold leafing. They selected sheets of Blackwood veneer, then laser-etched design elements such as maps, landscapes, flowers, trees, and locations significant to the Phantom’s history at three different depths. The lower levels appear darker, producing contrasts in light and color. Instead of cutting holes for the metal speaker grilles, the woodworkers milled the openings directly into the veneer.
The 3D marquetry goes in the opposite direction, adding raised designs to the main surface of the wood so that they can be felt as well as seen. Layers of ink accent the veneers with three-dimensional textures and patterns.
To learn the art of gold leafing, also known as gilding, five people from Rolls-Royce’s Interior Surface Centre took a special course at West Dean College in South East England. Starting with hand-laid sheets of high-gloss 24-carat gold leaf approximately 0.1 micrometers thick, they precisely cut “roads” for the map sections, then set them in the wood veneers.
Speaking of roads, this glimpse at the Private Collection’s interior takes us closer to its official reveal. We have a feeling Rolls-Royce clients will be coming out of the woodwork to get their own pieces of it.
