No hierarchy here
I don’t know about you, but I’ve always had a sneaky suspicion that taster sessions, maybe at the gym, or learning to cook, say, are a bit easy-going to sucker you into signing up for something that ends up being way harder than you’d been led to believe.
Not so at Rowden!
The one week course is literally the first week of the one year course. From our perspective, why on earth would we do it any other way? Rowden has a justifiable reputation for teaching how to make fine furniture from day one, so it seems only natural that anyone and everyone that walks in to experience the Rowden way should get exactly the same training.
Implicit in this is that the students on the shorter courses get the same teaching time, and come away with just about as much knowledge about accuracy and fine wood working as is possible to cram into a week, a month or however long the course is.
And because the short course students are leaning the same as the longer course students, they also start with the same benches, the same tools, and train in the same workshop spaces. It is all very communal and egalitarian.
… and everyone gets to obsess about wood for a week because ultimately that is what it is all about.
Short courses for people who want to see what it might be like to become a fine furniture maker, longer courses for those who are to become fine furniture makers.
Until next time,
Lakshmi
