Video: come and see inside…
November 20, 2008
At last we able to show you something of our workshops here at Rowden. Come and see us here and see some of the contemporary furniture being made here.
Comments (4)Contemporary Furniture Maker, and some…
November 12, 2008
Si Smith came to see me about a course about five years ago. He was a young man working for a picture framing company but unhappy with what he was doing. He wanted more training, had had a go at local colleges and decided that what they had to offer was not what he wanted. What he wanted was to become a really good maker. He had done City and Guilds and made a couple of pieces of furniture pretty badly [ Iam sure he wont mind me saying this now, tho then it might have hurt ]
Soo.. I had the feeling that this guy might make a good maker, he couldnt really afford my full Designer Maker Course, but he was never going to do that, although he had great ideas he knew he could only afford to do the year then get a job real fast.
Which is what he did. Si did our “Makers course” which is very similar to the Designer Maker Course except it is different in the second six months. On the designer maker course you are building your portfolio and testing your designs, on the makers course which is less expensive you are making for me, usually on simpler clients pieces, or gallery pieces. The aim is “good but slow”
Si Smith turned out to be one of those really good students, the kind that only ask really difficult questions, ones that you have to go away and think about before coming back with an answer. Also he was and is a grafter, that is he worked, hard. When the lorry arrives with three tons of timber Si was there to help unload, Si was “one of the soldiers” which is what you want in a small workshop someone who will muck in and get the job done.
Si stayed with me after his year and made me a lovely set of chairs and assisted Daren with “The Linenfold Sideboard” a Guildmark awarded piece. Then he went to work with Waywood. I knew he would get on there. This is a small workshop that has quietly been making some of the best furniture being made today. Waywood dont have one designer so anyone on staff can submit a design to a clients brief. I know that Si had done several designs but had never got the go ahead until now. It was lovely to see this exhibited recently and lovely to see a young man become one of the best makers around. Si Smith I am very proud to have played a small part in that.
Comments (0)Furniture Making at its best
October 31, 2008
Paul Perkins a former student at Rowden workshops sent me this lovely image of an English Brown Oak cabinet that he recently made for a client. This is utilizing a technique made popular in the middle ages called linen fold panelling. This was a way to decorate the surfaces of wall panelling to imitate fabric hence the name “linen fold”. Paul has used this in a contemporary piece to reflect an ancient technique and made a very special piece of work.
Comments (2)
Art and Innovation: is innovation a signal of the presence of a genuine creative act.
October 9, 2008
First published British Woodworking September 2008
Innovation in British Furniture Design
This is the first of a new series about British Furniture Design. I’m writing this in the context of a renaissance in British furniture making and furniture design. A golden period akin to that of Thomas Chippendale, Sheraton and Hepplewhite, great names evocative of a great period in English furniture making. But hopefully here I’ll do more than bang the drum of British furniture design. Hopefully I’ll be able to talk with you about what good design is, what good furniture making is, what quality is, what art is. For all of these things are essential if one is to make sense of good workmanship. Nothing saddens me more than seeing hundreds even thousands of hours poured in to a piece of exquisite workmanship only to be let down by poor design. If technique and craftsmanship give us the ‘how’, then design gives us an explanation, at least in part, as to the ‘why’. The reason, the motivation, for spending hundreds of hours making something truly extraordinary.
“There is no such thing as art….. there are only artists, who are favoured with a gift of balancing shapes and colours until they get it right. And rarer still, who posses the integrity of character which never rests content with half solutions, but is ready to forgo all easy effects, all superficial success for the toil and agony of sincere work” Ernst H Gombrich 1950. The Story of Art. This is the first paragraph of one of the earliest editions of what would describe itself as one of the most famous and popular books on art ever published. For 45 years it has remained unrivalled as an introduction to the whole subject, from the earliest cave paintings to the experimental art of today. Yet Prof. Gombrich’s radical and powerful introduction to the subject has been tempered over the years to something a little more accommodating to the art market of today. To say there is no such thing as art, though true, is challenging. To focus instead upon the challenges facing the producer rather than what is produced is invigorating, for it is this process that we want to examine. How is it done, what is it done for, what is important about it, how does the creative craftsperson work, what is valuable, what is not.
More than a year ago I attended an exhibition of contemporary British furniture that had the extraordinary effect of making me feel physically uncomfortable. Not to put to great a point upon it the work made me feel ill. The work of art is meant to move you, often physically, but not in this way. This exhibition entitled ‘A Celebration of Craftsmanship’ surrounded me with the work of young aspiring makers producing objects in which hundreds and thousands of hours had been invested, yet the overall effect was, to me at least, dispiriting. What was missing? What was not there? It is that, the why, the soul, the heart , that I want to talk about.
When taking on a large subject it is wise to attempt to digest it in small pieces and the structure and strategy of this series is to look at design in a series of discreet focused and complete chapters. Each article taking on a subject, and aspect of the conundrum that is art and design. In this case I’m going to start with the subject that foxed probably 80% of those makers exhibiting at Cheltenham last year. The subject of innovation. It’s one of the features of truly creative work that it is innovative, that it is different, it is in some way challenging to us. It’s one of the things we look out for. However, I do not in my heart believe that mere innovation alone is sufficient to move me. The Mark 1 eyeball is a terrifically clever animal. She will analyse a group of shapes, forms, in the twinkling. She can spot a dud line at 100 yards and is ever seeking to be visually enchanted and entertained. It is the Mark 1 eyeball that is the driver of fashion, together with a considerable industry that also benefits from it financially, but we won’t go into dreary commerce. It’s this requirement for innovation, for newness, for freshness. It’s this craving to make something new that induces the production of such vomit making furniture. Everybody wants to do something new. So lets grab the legs off of that, and the top off of that, and the finish off of that and what we end up with is a piece of furniture with all the elegance of a camel, and frankly I’m fed up with it.
So what does the innovative attitude of the designer give us? I’d like to compare chairs made by two furniture makers. The first is John Brown and the second is John Makepeace. John Brown is not a well known figure and not even his greatest friend could describe his work as being boldly innovative. John was a chair maker within a tradition of stick back chair making. He worked to my mind with great integrity, sensitivity and true awareness of what a good piece of furniture should be. But he worked without the objective of turning the chair on it’s head and starting again. John Brown was innovative but within the context of the details of the piece. He played around with proportion. He looked hard at the shapes and weights of different components, he bottomed out his seats and turned his spindles, he bowed his arms and tapered his legs, all with infinite care and sensitivity. You get the feeling that a chair made by John Brown was finished and polished with the sweat from his own brow. There is no bit of that chair that was ever given to anybody else. His work, his hands, his heart is deep within the fibres of the material. His whole personality infects the chair giving it presence, honesty, quality. Now there’s a word I don’t use very often. Quality. By that I don’t mean ‘quality assured’, or ‘hand made by robots’, I mean genuine creative quality. But it is a piece within it own oeuvre, within it’s own tradition. Most of John Brown’s stick back chairs stand out from the pack as being damn well made chairs, but would not define the moment they had been made. Would not change the way we look at chairs in the way that a John Makepeace chair might do.
The first time I saw Millennium I can honestly say that it was heart stopping, and that really is the test for me of whether a piece of work is profoundly good. We often say a work of art moves us and the art critic of The Times, David Sylvester, would describe the physical effects upon his body, the trembling hand, that a great painting would have. Moving us often literally means exactly that. Do we, can we perceive within our bodies a physical effect. Another test, especially with furniture for me is ‘the bastard, I wish I’d made that’. If I feel like that it’s a good one.
But why is Millennium so good? It was in lots of ways a development of techniques and forms that John Makepeace had been working on for two, maybe three decades. With chairs like Mitre, John Makepeace had shown the technical competence of his workshop. Laminating compound forms in ebony, a timber renowned for it’s ability to not stick one piece to another, and Millennium is a step on from that. Laminating compound shapes in a white timber like holly with totally invisible glue line is still incredibly impressive but these days we see technical competence and workshop mastery almost as a given, but John Makepeace was the first to push it to extremes. The forms of Millennium are like no other chair that goes before it. It has obvious influences from other periods and critics and art historians talk about the exact stylistic links to earlier movements, but the key thing is that it marks a point in the development of the history of chair making. It puts down a landmark. Before this point chairs weren’t like this, after this point they were influenced by the way that John Makepeace went about chair making, and that perhaps is something worth shouting about. If we accept that the things that we invent describe our lives, that common things from spoons and pens to chairs and bicycles are all made bearing the signature of our time and place and history will be learnt from the artefacts that we leave behind then this chair is of paramount importance. However, as a chair I cannot say I would want to be that close to it. I can feel very little of John Makepeace’s warmth and personality from within it’s bounds. Whereas a John Brown chair would sit in the sunshine and hum a pretty song to me, Millennium sits in an air conditioned museum, admired by many, but known by very few.
Comments (1)Furniture maker gets new job in top workshop
Congratulations to Jonathan Greenwood who has landed a rarely available position in one of Britains top furniture making craft workshops. Graeme Scott Furniture are not a well known name, they work from a small backstreet workshop in Devon but they supply highest quality furniture to private clients all over the world. Refits for a Jordanian palace, fitted furniture for a popstars New York dressing room, refits for Leonid Brezhnev’s former Dascha, all have been done quietly and competently in this highly skilled workshop.
Working with Graeme will be a challenge for Jon, this is an efficient quick moving workshop but this is a challenge that several of our previous students now working in top class workshops have been through and emerged as first class makers. Andrew Varah Furniture, Silver Lining, Waywood Furniture Makers are three others that now know that students that we have trained have the attitude and the basic skills to become highly skilled and valued furniture makers. Well done Jon, I am proud of you. Now work your cotton socks off….
Comments (1)David Savage now WEB 2.0 friendly
October 3, 2008
The younger members of my family are always wanting me to get with it, my daughter wants me to have a pigtail and silver rings in my nose. However a couple of my young collegues have convinced me of the value of Web 2.0. I am struggling but I have a Facebook page and a Facebook group. PLEASE BE MY FRIEND the link is David Binnington Savage at Facebook .
Thanks
David
Comments (0)Bespoke Furniture Exhibition
August 27, 2008
Alice Matthews invites you to an exhibition of her New Furniture Designs and to see the paintings of Helena Clews. The exhibition will be for one day only on Saturday 20th September between 10am and 6pm. The exhibition will take place at Sophies Barn 17 Silver St, Chalcombe Banbury OX172JR.
Alice is just now completing a one year course with us here before setting up her own workshops in London later this year. This is an golden opportunity for you to see the work of a young talented maker before she gets known about. This is a heads up, take the opportunity now, if you are considering having furniture made, this young woman’s work is going to become much more expensive in the future.
An article on Pearwood
August 14, 2008
First published in British Woodworking Magazine July 2008
Pear wood is one of the most sensual and satisfying of hardwoods that a furniture maker can encounter. The structure of the wood is hard, so hard that the sharpest of tools are required to work it. This allows you to cut the finest of details and form the most delicate of shapes. Pear wood is also, unlike almost any other hardwood, without figure. I say without figure meaning without the usual graphics of timber. Pear wood is a timber that hasn’t lines running through it, but instead has a colour shift. The general colour of pear wood is almost dark fleshy colour, pinky brown is a favourite description. That colour can shift orangey or purpley brown on either side of the main colour. On rare occasions you can get dark purple, blacky contrasting heartwood colour but that is rare. Generally the colour of pear wood is a fleshy pink.
Unlike our other exotic timbers, pear wood is a wood that is sensitive to work. Hand tools will take silky shavings from pear wood. There’s no need to scrape and scratch around to take out interlocking grain for there almost never is interlocking grain on pear wood. It’s what I call a well mannered wood. Pleasant to be with. It doesn’t stink or make you feel itchy or scratchy, it doesn’t get up your nose, it’s a nice wood to be around. In fact one of the most pleasant things about it is the way it works. The way fine silky shavings will come off with a well sharpened bench plane. The way new hues and colours are exposed with each shaving. Working with pear wood is a genuine sensuous experience, and one that should be cherished.
I first came in touch with pear wood over 30 years ago when I read about it in books by James Krenov. I then found myself a dealer near Bristol who had recently felled a small log of English pear wood. If I was prepared to buy the whole lot he would mill it up for me to the sizes I wanted. At that time I’d never dried any timber before and my London workshop hadn’t much space for me, let alone stacks of half dry timber. But I did have a flat roof that I thought would be a suitable place to stack this wood out. I read up about how to do it, got the pear wood home, dragged it up three flights of stairs, stickered it out with 1” square sticks at 12” intervals between each of the boards so that air could get round and covered it with a corrugated iron sheet to keep the direct sun off the boards. I sat back and looked with satisfaction at my precious stack of soon to be exquisite furniture. About that time an old craftsman said something to me that has stayed with me. He said ‘In timber lad there’s as much joy as heartache’ and I didn’t know that this was going to be one of those heartache moments. In the Handbook of English Hardwoods which was the reference book I used at the time it said ‘pear wood is timber that is inclined to twist on drying’, which is why I put the concrete blocks on top of the drying stack. What I should have done was put two or three tons of timber on the top of this stack as well. As my precious pear wood boards dried during that summer they turned into unusual wooden propellers. Each board twisted approximately 1” to 2” in each direction. I think I got a few small pieces of furniture from that stack but nothing larger than a jewellery box. Needless to say that was the last time I’ve attempted to dry English pear wood. Most of my pear wood these days comes from Switzerland. The Swiss are wonderful people and they grow pear wood as a shade tree in many of their cities. The pear wood they grow is steamed as a part of the drying process. The steaming slightly changes the colour of the timber from being pale fleshy pink to a slightly darker, redder fleshy pink. The steaming is done to remove and kill the huge borers that can munch their way through the entire tree. I found a few of these borers in my stack of pear wood propellors. They made gigantic holes, not just down the sweet sapwood but right in the middle of the heartwood, and you found them only by putting the board over the jointer, suddenly your immaculate board now had a great long hole in it and you’d shaved the top off this living creature, yeuch! Steamed pear wood suddenly had great attractions.
It’s not an enormous tree the pear tree, but I’ve found in my time boards coming from Switzerland can be 10’ long and 2’6” wide. The bark on the tree is coarse but the sapwood, like cherry wood, is almost indistinguishable from the heartwood, meaning you can use the timber almost from edge to edge.
You have to be careful what you use pearwood for. This is a timber that is in scarce supply and it is a relatively expensive timber. Also it’s not available in really big boards so it would be unusual to find a dining table being made in pear wood, certainly in solid form, though I have seen veneered pear wood boardroom tables occasionally. Over the years I have made small cabinets and small occasional tables and card tables in solid pear wood and wall hung cabinets and very occasionally chairs, and I can safely say it has been one of the most enjoyable timbers I’ve ever used. Now just ‘cos I say so don’t go out and cause a world shortage by buying it all.
In Memoriam : Elliot Guy
August 5, 2008
Elloit Guy was a student here. It was only a few weeks ago that we saw him loading up his stuff at the end of his course to go back to his young family in london. The news that he was attacked at a London party, stabbed in the neck, and killed, has come as a severe shock to us all. Elliot wasnt the kind of person to get stabbed. He was cool, gentle, a young dad with all to live for, with all that life has to offer before him. This is a tragedy, a tragedy compounded by the ignorance of the press that “sensationalised” the news.
Writing this has taken me over two weeks to face, I feel so angry this was a loss to me and to Elliots other friends here in Devon but this can be nothing compared with the loss faced by Amy. She has been Elloits brave and clever partner, it has been Amy who encouraged and supported Elloits drive to become a skilled cabinetmaker. Also Elenour their baby daughter born only weeks ago. Elenour and Amy have been robbed of a loving father and partner, a caring sensitive man who could make things of beauty from nothing. I dont know but I would guess that Elliot probably didnt get all the advantages that some kids get at the start of life. But he did get the capacity to make, and to do, and to work. Which he did all his short life, he came to me to learn to make with more skill, and was planning how to use his new skills to support his young new family when he was brutally murdered.
I have search my systems for a workshop image of Elliot but it was his nature to turn away when i wandered about with a camera. So all I have are shots only of his broad back. Instead i will show a table he made here, difficult techniques didnt worry Elliot he took them on and came up smiling. I miss you Elliot.
Comments (9)
Alice and the lost laptop.
July 8, 2008
Things are sent to try us. One of my current students Alice put her
laptop on top of her car with the hard disc backup in the laptop
bag, and, you guessed it, she drove off. No laptop, no photos of
recent work gone zippo. Yet after a few days, back she comes with
shiny new mac and another set of piccies. Its not how you fall, its
how you get up again that matters…
Ballerina by Alice Matthews
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Comments (0)Quote from Grayson Perry
June 10, 2008
I heard this quote from a radio program about craftsmanship. Grayson Perry is a British Turner Prize winning artist.
“A lot of young people are somehow put off struggle and difficulty. Boredom thresholds now because of the nature of entertainment, people are adrenalin addicted and I think that one of the big unspoken addictions in our society is adrenalin. We are addicted to drama, everything has to be exciting, black and white there’s no middle ground, we’re all being gradually pushed into this area where our attention span is that of a gnat. Difficulty, learning a skill that might take 10 years over 10,000 hours is something that frightens to death, when in fact when you attain that it is probably the happiest most joyful thing you can do”.
Grayson Perry BBC radio4 Thinking Allowed April 2008.
Zen and the Art of Workmanship.
May 13, 2008
I got a couple of nice e-mails from you, its always nice to get responses even if its stuff I don’t want to hear. I got a couple of you that didn’t like “the travelogue”, my trip to Japan, in my last noooz, telling me that what you wanted to hear was about tools and the workshop and all that stuff. Which is fair. However I am not allowed out much these days and I was struggling with an idea. You know how it is you feel there is an association but you cannot quite strike it, you just feel its there. That is where I was with Zen and Japanese gardens, meditational stuff, Zen archery and and workmanship. So I put it in the Nooz to help me unravel it.
I sent a similar “travelogue” of my trip to Japan off to Nick Gibbs my editor at British Woodworking Magazine and he sent it back “not good enough do again” You see he knows me well enough I have worked with Nick for years and we had discussed the trip and my reasons for going, he said, “this is fine but it does not do what you were telling me about “. So I sat down and thought about it. At that time Greg Marquez another Noooz reader sent me this: “Thanks David, for the fine photos of Japanese architecture and the equally interesting commentary about them. “I was especially struck by your observation about Zen and the practice of meditation, the heart of which you have intuitively grasped”. Greg at that moment had opened the door for me, because until then I had not pinned it down to Zen, thank you Greg.
I blather on about Zen when I am teaching I say that you must “Zen that saw down the line” its about Non Directed Focus. If you attempt too much control it goes to hell, keep it loose and focus and its fine. A bit like bringing up a child, or serving a tennis ball, oh hell maybe that’s two metaphores too many. But it led me to write this for Nick Gibbs…..
RYOAN JI
Nowhere perhaps told me this more powerfully to me than the Zen Garden of Ryoan-ji. This is a place of apparent utter simplicity. A courtyard garden with a walled background topped with a low shingled roof, surrounds a white raked gravel garden. In fact the term garden seems inappropriate for the only green is the browny green of moss around the base of some, not all, of the 7 outcrops of stone rocks that appear to be growing through the raked gravel surface. That’s it. Nothing else. Nowt, Zippo. Two walls, a gravel surface and a few rocks. Yet the more that one sits there and looks at this, even with a crowd buzzing around you, the more there is to see. First the placing of the stones, the interval between them, then the variance of the colours of the wall behind. Then the shaping of the stones marking the gravel, the colours of the shingle roof. All of these things seem to acquire a focus, a clarity. Variance of colour and shape. The rocks themselves begin to have definition, their colours seem to sparkle and change.
All this is to do with, not what is changing within the garden, but what is changing within ourselves. By looking, perhaps we are seeing more. Perhaps our perception is altered, our capacity to see enhanced. I asked my colleague whether the young Japanese who are visiting this garden today really got it, in any way understanding the ideas of Zen Buddhism and the purpose of this space. ‘Nah’ he said, ‘not a chance’. Workmanship requires meditation, requires focus, requires 10,000 hours of application.
SANGESEN DO
I saw this again at Sangesendo, though it was perhaps not what I was brought here to see. This was the temple of 1,000 Buddhas, yet my fascination was not with the many Buddas but with the building itself, and it’s history as a centre of archery and swordsmanship. There was a gallery on the outside of the building where archery competitions took place, where the archer would either sit or stand. The target was at the end of the building, some 200 yards away. The archer would extend his left arm holding the bow above his head. The bow would be held in his hand in a horizontal position. He or she, for there were female samurai, would observe the target in a casual manner, reach up and fit an arrow to the bowstring, draw the bowstring down vertically to just below one’s chin and then smoothly oh so smoothly with one sweeping action bring the bow down until the arrow was near horizontal and loose it at the target. That target would be waaaaaay down the end of the building. Zen archers have the reputation of drawing the bow and loosing the arrows without consciously observing the target, they did it without looking at the target. Having been there, having seen the place and experienced it’s atmosphere I do not doubt that for one moment yet I find it quite extraordinary.
What think you has this got to do with woodwork. Well quite a lot really. Workmanship at it’s very essence, where true craftsmanship is involved, is a meditative process. Time and again craftsmen are doing work just for it’s own sake, “to get it right”. Taking hundreds of hours more just to get it right. They, like the Zen archer are totally focused not on the target, the end result, but the journey the process We craftsmen and women are totally disregarding the end and learning to, “think with the whole body” to quote Taisen Deshimaru
I should credit “Zen and the Art of Archery” by Eugen Herrigel isbn 0-140-19074-0 Penguin Books
Also British Woodworking Magazine British Woodworking Magazine.
PLEASE FEEL FREE TO COMMENT NO PERSON ALONE CAN GET THERE, TOGETHER WHO KNOWS..
New Table from Jonathan
May 1, 2008
Lovely furniture is being made at Rowden all the time. This dining table in English Cherrywood is the latest of the pieces being made here by my students. Inspired by a table made by Edward Barnsley which was interpreted most notably by Alan Peters and more recently by David Savage. Circular pedestal tables have an inevitable form that takes them towards this type of solution. A elegant piece of work. Jonathan Walter can be contacted for similar commissions on jonathan.walter@gmail.com
If you want to comment and please do, hit the title New Table…. to reload this page and fill in the box.
Comments (1)Gracie
April 30, 2008
When I have an opportunity to make a new chair I tend to jump at it. This was a commission to design a dining table and possibly a set of chairs to be first seen at a distance. The context is a hard modern space with lots of glass and white marble floors. My challenge, and I always love a challenge, was to design a set of chairs that would have an organic feel to them. Comfort was an issue, as it should always be, and the chosen timber this time was American Walnut. I had the idea that I could wiggle the chairbacks across all the chairs linking the sinusoidal curve together. “Gracie” was the chair we came up with. We called her Gracie cause it seemed to suit her. Tall slim elegant but with a flexible strength. This chair is one that can be replicated in Walnut or other timbers a guide price would be £2000- £2500 per chair depending upon the size of the batch.
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Students; A fine lot of tables you got me into..
April 25, 2008
Every now and again i can happily post information about what current students are doing here at Rowden Workshops. This time it is a series of tables large and small all made beautifully by a group of talented young designer makers. I have included e-mail addesses for those of them who are available for commissions. Take the opportunity now these makers are just starting out they are looking for work and will give you a great job at maybe cost less than a more established designer maker. Whilst they are at this workshop i will watch over the project and will make sure the standard of workmanship is high. Its gotta to be the most amazing opportunity for you to get great furniture at less cost.
Elliot Guy
A lovely maple table with a sunburst veneer top cleverly set off centre.
This is an extending table made in English Walnut. The leaves draw out at either end to change a six seater table into an eight or ten seater. Tom is currently working on a very clever design for a range of benches and low occasional tables. Watch this space.
Jonathan Pierce
Made in English Cherrywood with a Quilted Maple veneer and rosewood detail. Jon has recently set up his new workshop and would be able to take commissions.
Jonathan Walter
I really like this table. Made in European Cherry it is a development of a design originated by Edward Barnsley and refined by Alan Peters David Savage and many others.
Jonathan Walter
Another lovely piece by Jonathan Walter in Walnut.
Jonathan Greenwood
I really love this table made in Maple with ebony details. Simple but repeating circular elements.
Comments (0)Savage Sensai in the land of the warm toilet seat
April 24, 2008
Japan was an amazing experience. I landed in Tokyo and had half a day to recover before a half day press conference for Kodansha, my hosts. This was a serious event with over 90 Japanese journalists and three TV crews present. I did my work successfully, and the book was duly launched to the world. I now had 6 more days to enjoy Japan. Kodansha were not only my hosts, but provided me with two guides, Tazaki san who spoke very good English and Sharai san who did not. Both had been involved with the publishing of the book and were being let off their leashes for a bit of a holiday. Accompanying them was Toszawa san, the nearest thing the Japanese have to a living national treasure in woodworking. These three men, all in their late 50’s and early 60’s guided me round the treasures of their country and I think enjoyed themselves in the process.
ISE JUNGU
The first Buddist temple we visited was what was described as the largest wooden building in the world. It’s a place called Ise Jingu. What was overwhelming about this building, apart from the size which was truly enormous, was the nature of the overhanging pitch of the roofs, they built beam on beam each one a little further out and they used a structure of glueless joints. All the joinery was dry jointed so the building could sway and move very slightly in the event of earthquakes. Which I suppose is why it is still with us.
NARA
We then moved on to Nara which is a very large and ancient town and they took me to a complex of temples including what was described to me as the oldest wooden structure in the world built about 730AD by the first Shogun of Japan.
This is a five storey high Buddhist temple, built around a single wooden central column. This had been set in the ground with stones all around it so that dampness and moisture drained away from the end of the pole. This column, which must have been a mighty tree, was the core of the building, everything else was hung off that core and allowed the building to wriggle and twist in high winds and earthquakes. This, along with the interlocking joinery, accounted for it’s longevity, after all we don’t have any buildings built in 730, or do we? What also impressed me about Nara were the compounds around the temples.
These were covered archways also made in wood with bellied columns having the same “Entacise” as a column on a Greek temple. The cross members were also slightly curved. One of the buildings was described as the ‘avenue of rainbows’. The sophistication of this joinery combined with the simplicity if the design was really very appealing. I was also constantly being told how lucky I was that the cherry trees were out.
RYOAN-JI
Next port of call was Kyoto were I was taken to Ryoan-ji.This is one of the most famous of the Zen Gardens. These are spaces enclosed usually by a low wall, maybe with a small roof on that wall. The surface of the garden is very largely covered with raked white gravel and in the centre of the space are several rocks and mounds of moss and this the sum total of the garden.
Very few elements. I had especially wanted to see Ryoan-ji because I’m rather interested in Zen Buddhism, not as a practising Buddhist but as someone who gets close to meditating when drawing and sometimes when working. I think Ryoan-ji was one of the highlights of my visit. There are very few things to look at, but if one settles down and begins looking one can begin to experience the complexity within that simple arrangement. The colours and shapes upon the backing wall, the variance of the surfaces on the stone, the patterns of the gravel, the arrangement of the stones, all have a detail and a complexity and variance within the surfaces. I think this was an extremely beautiful and spiritual place.
SANJUSANGEN-DO
The next stop was at Sanjusangen-do. This was described to me as the temple of a thousand Buddha, and indeed it was a collection of what seemed like thousands and thousands of statues of the Buddha doing various things. I was much less interested in the statues and more excited in the architecture of the building which was an extremely long and rather beautiful building, and in it’s history as a centre for archery and swordsmanship. There was a gallery on the outside of the building where archery competitions took place where the archer would sit, or stand . The target was at the end of the building. The archer would extend his left arm holding the bow vertically above his head with the bow horizontal. He, or she, for there were female samurai would observe the target draw down and with one smooth sweeping action bring the arrow to horizontal and loose it at a target. That target would be at a distance of what to me looks about 200 yards away. Zen archers have the reputation of drawing the bow and loosing the arrows without consciously observing the target. They did it without even looking at the target, while they were drawing the bow and loosing the arrows. Without in any way doubting that I find it quite extra ordinary having seen this building.
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Japan
March 13, 2008
I recently sent out the following PR release. I am really excited to get the chance to spend a week in Japan at the invitation of Kodansha. Watch this space.
MAD FURNITURE MAKER AT LOOSE IN JAPAN
Mad furniture master craftsman David Savage of WWW.FINEFURNITUREMAKER.COM is very popular in Japan these days. This photo shows a rare shot of the old man actually doing some work. These days he is too busy to polish tables as he is traveling the world promoting the British hand craftsmanship he so passionately believes in. This time it is Japan where a Japanese publisher Kodansha selected Davids workshop to represent the recent British influence on Japanese culture. “They are very concerned that with the modern manufacturing ethos their culture is being robbed of something valuable, the touch of the human being evident in hand made artifacts.” said David. “In many ways they are ahead of us for they already have a higher sense of the value of what hand made is. They know that craftsmen and women cannot produce perfect surfaces or objects, they understand that what is exciting is the struggle of the skilled human being wanting to make the object a beautifully as he or she can, but knowing they are doomed to imperfection. It is the struggle that demonstrated the humanity.”
Comments (1)Synagistic Life drawing
We have had a great spell of life drawing classes recently. That probably because i feel that my drawings are going in a new and interesting direction. I have a few students in there with me, some turn up for the class, some would rather finish a bit of woodie stuff. Life drawing is always important but never urgent. So I teach and draw and look forward to the session every week as a time I can learn something new. I remember the advice give to tennis players by the great female tennis pro Virginia Wade
”Success in Tennis is about liberating your mind to allow your body to do the right thing.”
Drawing is pretty much like that, sometimes its about taking the brakes off. Allowing your eyes to see and your hand to move without interferance from the brain. We certainly ask our students to look in a different way to see straight surfaces to distinguish correct shapes from incorrect. Drawing is just away of doing that better.
Tools
We are in the happy position of seeing new students buy tools every four months so we are constantly being confronted with what is the best winged habwit for thirty bucks. The result of this is that we are constantly upgrading and changing our recommendations for winged habwits. The latest example of this is the straight edge. This is key bit of kit as without it one cannot check flatness and this can affect the fitting of components. We try to avoid spending too much money on unnecessary accuracy. Starrett have been makers of best quality straight edges for as long as I can remember and make really nice feather edged straight edges of two foot and three foot lengths. They are eye wateringly expensive and not always as straight as they should be.
We check out all flat making tool on a big granite surface plate that is really really flat. I got this a few years ago when a customer service girl from Axeminster Power Tools told me that I was measuring the flatness of the students tool incorrectly and had been doing so for twenty five years. This stone is the ducks guts covered in a protective box it is certificated to be within Eons of perfect flatness. So we put planes and other tools on it and check with a feeler guage around the perimiter. Any customer service girl that argues now gets the Certificate of Eons waved at them.
Putting a straight edge on the surface should give you a twinkling of light evenly along the length of the blade.Some Starrett edges have given problems because they have been bent in transit being relatively thin construction they will bend and this changes how they perform. Some straight edges are simple bars of steel about 4mm thick without the feather edge of the quality Starrett. Format makes a good one and I have a couple of these in my own tool collection. These are less expensive but one needs to hold the on the edge at an angle to get a reading as 4mm is a pretty thick blade and prone to obscuring light. Another product we have used was the 450SE from Axeminster Power Tools This looked very like the Starrett with a nice feather edge but was very very cheap. And very very unflat. We returned a lot of these to the nice customer service lady until I think they stopped selling it. Then we got the idea to straighten the edge ourselves. As the feather edge is less than half a millimetre across it need little work to get very flat. Most blades were concave so the two ends touched on a sheet of plate glass with 180 grit abrasive fixed to it. Rub rub rub, check, rub rub, flat. Hoorah!
Veritas have taken all the sport out of this for us now by selling a really nice extruded Aluminium edge that is less expensive and pretty flat but dont ding it, it dont ding nicely.
The other tooly fashion that is sweeping through the workshop at the moment is low angle bench planes. Daren and I bought our bench planes years ago so they are conventional style bevel up he swears by old Stanley planes and i rather sniffily have a Norris plane. We have waited for a student to get one of these low angle bench planes after reading reviews. I am always a bit suspicious of the way tool makers want to fill out tool cabinets and empty our pockets so I havent rushed out at this new development and said I gotta have this. But Jonathan did, bless him. He bought a Lee Neilsen no 5 and we were all very taken with it. Planing English oak that with Darens well sorted Stanley gave 95% polished oak and 5%rough as guts with the low angle gave a clean 100%oak surface. “Would you buy one I ask Daren?” “Yes, probably if I had a job that needed a planed finish”
came the answer. Now Tom has got himself a No7 and Steve either wants one or has already bought one…….. winged habwits!
Comments (3)Death by H……..
I don’t have a verb suitable for the description of being undone by the intervention of an Interior Decorator but the above will have to suffice. Last month I was all excited about a project that involved a large ancient house near Oxford, two lovely clients that I had met many years ago and their requirement for a Wizzo modern bed as a centre piece for the master bedroom. They had consulted a decorator and did not like what she proposed which was a four poster bed that reminded me of a galleon in full sail. I worked myself to a frazzle right up to Christmas to get them drawings “ Do not send me full presentation drawings” said Meena “send me sketches and we can develop it together”. That should have warned me, but O K I can do this and I got a bundle of e-mailed drawings to them in New York over Christmas and I sent the actual drawings to their home with timber samples for when they got back. This all brought a very positive response, “We love it”
Enter the New Year I was all set to make maquettes and do designs for other pieces in the room, however the sense in the air is all rather different, “
We have just had a visit from H………., about the bedroom, can you just hold on with other drawings for a while……..
Now I know whats comming next. Hen will be wanting to put her designer in place and probably, possibly, collect a commission from the maker. I feel cross and express my feelings on the forum that we furniture designer makers use to keep in touch [and find out where to buy No3 brass screws) I get an e-mail from an old pal that says “do you mean Henrietta So-and So? If so, I worked with her a few years ago and would rather sh-g Gordon Brown than work with that woman again”
. Now that image rather put me off my lunch. A few days later I get a call from a friendly furniture maker that confirmed my suspicions about other workshops being brought in, also ignorant of my previous work.
Now I happily tender for work but in that case I charge £475 per day of studio time whether I get the job or not. Doing a good set of drawings usually takes me about three days. However if the client has done their homework and selected me to do a job I will not charge a penny, I will do drawing after drawing to get it right for them. If I fail no fee.
So what do i do if I get caught with this situation. A situation that my mate who runs the other workshop is also caught in for he was not told that other designers had submitted drawings. Well I could have withdrawn in a huff, told the client what I thought of their duplicitious decorator or just gone off in a sulk. Well what I have done is remember that I am still in with a shout and its a big house. What I have done is send the client an expensive book called “Bespoke. A referance source book of furniture designer makers”
by Betty Norbury. It features my work inside and on the cover of the book. It also shows my mates work and most other top makers in Britain. I just sent it with my compliments to hit their doorstep before their meeting with H…. and the competitors sketches. We shall see, if P… and M… can get the hang of commissioning modern work, this could be one one will run and run. We could in twenty years be looking at one of the finest collections of 21st centuary furniture in the world. Or we could be looking at another decorated up market country house that looks just like a good hotel.
As one door shuts…… Hi David, Can you come up and have a look at our new dining room we want a couple of tables to go with that lovely dining table and chairs you made for us two years ago…. Penny
PS Colin is building a new house for us .
Some new house. I met at the site office and asked the site manager “how many units you got on this site it looks like ten or twelve” “just one” he said” its for Colin and Penny. As we wander about the site with Pennies decorator and the joinery contractor (this is how to do it ) two special tables turn into six and “Oh” said Colin “I really want a desk for my new study something special, a few curves nice and tasty”
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