Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared in Volume 7 of B.H. Magazine. Order your copy now.
Somewhere in Daniel Schonknecht's Melbourne workshop, a piece of marble is being trimmed. It came from a client's kitchen bench on the other side of the world, sent to Melbourne so her Specht Design espresso machine would match the stone it will eventually adorn.
Schonknecht is a furniture maker and cabinetmaker by trade, someone who spent years in a high-end cabinetmaking business developing the kind of eye that can't be switched off. He got into coffee around 2013, and it quickly became an obsession – not just in the drinking of it but in the hardware around it.
"I’ve owned various coffee machines over the years, and the stainless steel and plastic felt very cold to me," says Schonknecht. "I thought the obvious way to add some warmth was to make a timber handle for the portafilter."
That instinct, once triggered, wouldn't let go. "I just started having these crazy ideas and my brain would not switch off."
One portafilter handle turned into two, and following his wife's suggestion, a few photos on Instagram prompted a global response.
Within six months, Schonknecht had stepped away from the career he’d spent years shaping. "Once I got my hands on my first machine, it ignited this passion in me, and I knew I had found my destiny," he says.
Specht was born – named for the German word for woodpecker, a nod to Schonknecht's heritage, with a logo rendered in the style of a historic family crest. From the beginning, the identity of the business was clear: less a customisation operation and more a commissioning one, working one-on-one with each client from the first design conversation through to delivery.
"I take a very restrained approach," says Schonknecht. "I always try to keep the original soul of the machine and refine it. I have a lot of respect for the people who have put effort into designing these machines."
The base machines are already exceptional – La Marzocco, Slayer, Kees van der Westen, Victoria Arduino, Rocket – and the point is never to override them, but to make them feel as though they could only belong to one person, explains Schonknecht.
"We're a working workshop. We're not a showroom. We don't have machines on display. Things get messy in here,” Schonknecht says over the whirr of a belt sander.
He's not wrong – there’s timber offcuts, chisels, bench surfaces covered in fine dust of hand-finished work, and machines in various states of undress alongside components that, removed from context, could easily be mistaken for watch parts or furniture hardware. The tools haven't changed, only the objects they're trained on.
There's an Aston Martin commission in progress in the workshop right now: the paddle surround shaped to mimic the heater controller of a classic Aston interior, the brew paddle referencing an old Aston control knob, chrome inserts framing a grille pattern lifted from the car's front end. It doesn't announce itself.
"I don't want it to be too obvious," says Schonknecht. "I want the owner to go, 'Oh damn, I didn't even realise he did that. That's from the interior of my car.' I add details only an owner would know about. I want them to have to look at it twice, and keep coming back to it."
Elsewhere on the bench sits a machine sporting what looks exactly like a hand-hammered brass finish – except it isn't, because hammering something that needs to hold precise internal tolerances would distort the shape entirely.
"It's actually done with a die grinder with a little burr," explains Schonknecht, matter-of-factly. The effect, he says, is identical.
Then there's a Porsche build in Espresso Brown – a Porsche colour, matched to the client's car – with his daughters' favourite colours of blue and pink worked into the details at his request, because that's the kind of thing that happens here. And that marble-sided machine, waiting for its edge to be trimmed flush to the panel.
Entry sits at around AU$13,000 to $14,000, with the most complex builds reaching $40,000 to $50,000. Budget is rarely a concern for Specht clients, but if you need an argument, a machine used daily for ten years costs only a few dollars a cup – and it’s entirely unique. When I gesture at a $15,000 build and call it a watch, Schonknecht doesn't miss a beat. "A watch," he says. "In
some cases, a car."
Roughly 60 per cent of Specht's business goes to America, with machines simultaneously heading to Singapore, Monaco, and across Europe, which is a remarkable feat for a studio operating out of Melbourne. Being Australian, it turns out, is part of the appeal.
“Someone said it perfectly to me one day: ‘So many people come to you because you are in Australia. Americans just love Australians,’” explains Schonknecht. Paying in USD doesn't hurt either, nor does the fact that Melbourne is arguably the world's coffee capital.
"We have so much talent here in Melbourne."
— Daniel Schonknecht
“I’ve known some of our suppliers for over 15 years, before I even started Specht, and the relationships we form are just as valuable as the work they do."
Every supplier is within 30 kilometres of the studio, all timber work is done in-house, and each completed build goes through a five-day stress test before it leaves. The timeline from design conversation to delivery is 12 to 16 weeks.
Schonknecht estimates capacity at around 200 to 250 machines a year – roughly the output of a small independent watchmaker – but growth for its own sake isn't the goal.
"I think we could probably grow by another 20 to 30 per cent, while improving at the same time. We're constantly looking at what we do and asking what we can do to make it better."
The process demands Schonknecht’s direct involvement at every stage, and for the people commissioning these machines, that's largely the point. You are working with the man who started this in his spare time because he couldn't stop thinking about it – and that hasn't changed.
Most people pull their morning coffee on a machine identical to countless others. In an age where true bespoke is the pinnacle of luxury, those who find their way to Specht have decided that the one object they interact with before their day starts deserves to be entirely their own. And once that idea gets into your head, a standard machine is a very hard thing to go back to.