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The Furniture ofRupert Williamson

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T H E F U R N I T U R E O F R U P E RT W I L L I A M S O N

Rupert WilliamsonForeword by Mary La Trobe-Bateman

The Furniture of Rupert Williamson

Duval & HamiltonDistributed by Antique Collectors’ Club

Foreword Mary La Trobe-Bateman

1 Beginnings 7

2 New chairs from traditional sources 23

3 Albrizzi and Prescote 33

4 The evolution of armchairs 47

5 An organic bookcase and the development of naturalistic designs 55

6 Rock cabinets 69

7 Computer assisted design 77

8 Dining–room furniture 85

9 Steambending and production work 97

10 A pied–à–terre in Edinburgh 103

11 A House in Oxford 119

12 A home in Marylebone 131

13 Experimenting with styles 143

14 The designer–maker 149

First published 2014 by Duval & Hamilton Distributed by Antique Collectors’ Club

Text and images © Rupert Williamson Introduction © Mary La Trobe-Bateman

British Library Cataloguing in Publications Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 0 9501355 0 2 hardback

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any storage and retrieval system, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

Designed and typeset in Elena by Dalrymple Printed and bound in Belgium by DeckersSnoeck

Front jacket illustration: Three Cabinets, 2003 Back jacket: Cabinet, 2003 Frontispiece: Dining Table, 2000 ( detail) Photographs by John McKenzie

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Contents

6 7

then in three dimensional models and finally, how they were actu-ally made. It is an exemplary record, and should be read by all aspir-ing students as well as those thinking of commissioning. For the student of design the descriptions of studio practice and business development show how challenging it is to earn a living whilst pur-suing one’s own ideas and vision. Williamson describes his early idealism when he and his wife Nichola struggled with their twin babies to build a home and life together. Later when his practice was established in a workshop in Milton Keynes the challenges were different ones: the rigours of managing a workshop, regulat-ing the amount of incoming work with a few employees and young apprentices can be difficult for a creative person. Throughout this account he never loses sight of its core – the pursuit of his personal vision of design and making through the combination of decora-tion highlighting structure and structure used as decoration.

When one meets Rupert, his diffident manner conceals a fierce perfectionism and ambition; his single minded pursuit of an artis-tic vision has not been diluted by the declaration that he has ‘always needed to earn a living’ to support his family. As with the mastery of skills in his furniture making, he has been similarly driven to achieve academically, despite the handicap of dyslexia. Initially he studied at High Wycombe, a new course in the late 1960s set in the traditional region of British furniture making where he learnt the techniques which he has honed and used over the years, whilst experimenting with his own radical, contemporary designs. He spent the next three years at the Royal College of Art in a group of five post-graduate students each pursuing their individual ideas. Later, as a well established artist-craftsman at the University of Teeside, he was one of the first students to be awarded a PhD based on the body of work he had produced together with a 50,000 word essay New Forms of Imagery in Furniture. The Reflections of a Designer working in the Revival of the 1970s and beyond which formed part of his submission. And now his dogged persistence in writing this record of his career – a tour de force – is further proof.

Standing in the wandering abundance of flowers, vegetables and trees of the garden where Williamson likes to relax with Nichola after a day in the workshop, it is easy to see a link between this and the imagery of natural forms he has used in his work. The bursts of colour amongst the florid fecundity also appear in much of his later work. Perhaps naming their children Ruskin and Daisy, born in the 1970s is a description of the twin sides of his inspiration. Wil-liamson rightly sees himself as a part of the continuum of English furniture making, adding his name to a roll call that includes the Barnsleys and Alan Peters, although he is not driven by the social-ist aims of Ruskin and Morris. But there is the other side – his love of nature – the inheritance of gardening and growing things from his father. This appears most obviously in the furniture that describes the movement in the trees and the forms of rocks; but it is also in the slowness of the time that it takes to make each piece. Williamson’s aesthetic is derived from the time and intricate construction needed to make his work: in some ways it is similar to the growing of a garden.

In 1996 excited by its possibilities Williamson successfully struggled with mastering CAD and produced a design for the competition for a table to celebrate Contemporary Applied Arts’ fiftieth anniversary. This colourful, original design was immedi-ately declared the winner and Williamson was commissioned to produce it. It was a memorable opening night with the then Chair of the Arts Council and Rector of the RCA, Sir Christopher Frayling, lighting the fifty candles displayed along its five-metre surface. It was also a fitting celebration of Williamson’s maturity from the alternative hippy clothed in colour and living in a commune, to a successful artist craftsman able to embrace the many complex and colourful opportunities of computer aided design, at the click of a mouse.

This book, a record of a unique maker’s life and work, commis-sioned by an enlightened patron who has many pieces of William-son’s work, deserves a similar celebration.

Rupert Williamson’s furniture is a continuum of experimentation and development. In all his work his individuality as a maker is not only shown in the striking designs but also in the making; the finished pieces often make light of the risks involved in mak-ing new work, particularly the intricacies of the construction. In Peter Dormer’s book Furniture Today: Its Design & Craft Williamson acknowledges that his designs are driven by appearance but he emphasises the importance of the method of construction and structure that affects the eventual aesthetics of the finished work. ‘The techniques of construction are so integrated with the aesthet-ics of a structure that it is very hard to separate the two, I think it is only a matter of emphasis.’

Williamson is part of a small group of celebrated furniture makers who studied at the Royal College of Art in London under Professor David Pye. Here they broke with both the traditions of craft, as they were conventionally thought of at the time, and the constraints of industrial design to work in a manner much closer to how fine artists work. Throughout their subsequent careers each has developed their own work in their own studio or workshop space by constantly searching to express an individual statement with the freedom artists are automatically accorded. This happened in many of the craft disciplines, ceramics, glass, textiles and metal and led to a surge in the international recognition of British crafts. For Williamson the vision was to make furniture that respected the decorative traditions of previous centuries whilst challenging everything from the past. His work soon became recognisable and refreshingly different from others in the group, who also pursued their own paths.

It was a golden time for graduates from the applied arts’ courses. And later for the Crafts Council which staged many important exhibitions organised by their Head of Exhibitions, Ralph Turner. There was an energy and dynamism around Waterloo Place where the exhibitions were staged. At the same time in the 1970’s Ann Hartree opened one of the most successful applied arts galleries,

Prescote, in rural Oxfordshire where she specialised in showing one-off furniture. Prescote was housed in stables on the farm in Banbury owned by her friend, Anne Crossman, the widow of the Cabinet Minister Richard Crossman. The first exhibition was opened by Lord Donaldson, who was the Minister for Arts and a neighbouring farmer. This endorsement brought many of their friends to the gallery and encouraged visitors to buy and commis-sion new work. Later the major salerooms, Bonham’s, Sotheby’s and Christie’s staged contemporary exhibitions in London curated by Peta Levi and then Janice Blackburn, again showing expensive one-off furniture. Thus Rupert’s work was publicised through exhi-bitions in galleries and the major salerooms and seen by potential clients, many of whom have continued to commission his work.

This book explores his career, plotting the key moments and cru-cial patrons that have led to an impressive body of work, with many pieces being acquired by museum collections, including the Vic-toria & Albert Museum, London and the Royal Scottish Museum, Edinburgh. It describes the lifetime’s work of a designer-maker living through a particular time in history. It follows Williamson’s development as a colourful hippy aspiring to communal living, designing and making furniture to match his sixties passion for throwing conventions aside. The silver upholstery and gold painted wood of these extravagant chairs soon gave way, after further study, to drawings and models of pieces in the V&A collections and a per-sonal ambition to update the ‘English chair’. Later, as a response to his time visiting some of the leading American woodworkers in California he explored the use of imagery from natural forms, and then his pencil sketches and model making were joined by designs developed by CAD. Now the 3D possibilities offered by computer generated design led to the deconstruction of forms in the manner of Libeskind and Gehry.

Williamson describes how much of his work came to be com-missioned, how the relationship with the client had to be respected and managed and how his ideas were initially visualised on paper,

ForewordM A RY L A T R O B E - B AT E M A N

9

At the age of eight I was given a carpentry set, a present that I now feel must have been the catalyst which led to my career of making and designing furniture in wood. From my schooldays onwards I have had an instinctive desire to create new forms of furniture, and today I have sketchbooks of my drawings and files bulging with photographs of my finished pieces that demonstrate the results. When I was asked to write about my furniture design, I thought it would be interesting to look back at my body of work and trace the way it evolved. Before I began to browse through the archive, I thought it would reflect a steady, linear development that could be traced chronologically in the book. However, having studied the pictures, I felt that a thematic approach would be more effective, in order to give a rounded picture of how my furniture design has evolved. This opening chapter describes my early work during the years before I went to art college, and how I was influenced during the course of my seven years there. Subsequent chapters are divided into projects and themes that best link the work together.

I started designing and making furniture around 1962, dur-ing my last years at Whittlebury School, I copied from pictures in books, simply selecting furniture designs I liked. During my last days at school I made a chaise-longue to a design by Marcel Breuer, so give myself a little credit for taste. Woodwork was my hobby, and although I was quite proficient I thought no more about it than I did about other interests such as cricket. It was certainly not something I considered as a career, being associated with manual jobs and poor pay, and I was ambitious to have a job a bit further up the social scale – just what I didn’t know – and as my parents were ambitious for me it had to be white collar. As it turned out I fell off the ladder at my first attempt to pursue a professional career, by failing to be accepted as an architectural student. At the interview for the course, from which I had hoped to launch my career, the tutor told me that an architect’s work was 99 per cent business and 1 per cent art and that ‘you seem

1 Beginnings

1 Chair, 1971, fibreglass structure and chromed steel, with silver fabric upholstery. h 80cm.

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tubular steel design, but resorted to faking some of the curves and painting the wood gold to hide the construction, ending up with an art deco-style design with silver cushions [PLATE 2]. Making ceramic pieces there was no choice but to be controlled by the material, although I managed to produce a very picturesque bar-becue reflecting my interest in all things curvaceous and putting two fingers up to the strictures of modernism [PLATE 3]. In the silversmithing course I made a jewellery casket true to its craft, but added a vivid pink velvet lining to add a touch of decadence.

I never did come to terms with the modernist approach to design, and left High Wycombe under a cloud for not falling in line with the ideals of the tutors. I produced some colourful, curvaceous pieces of work that bore more relation to the style of the 1960s than to the ethos of the college. I also gained some invaluable experience during my time there. In practical terms I could now work with metals and ceramics, and use all the machinery relating to furniture production. Aesthetically I had learnt to design in three dimensions using simple models rather than producing work directly from two-dimensional designs created on a drawing board. I also learnt that knowledge of the production process results in a deeper understanding of the design process.

Before the end of the course I was considering my future, and

2 Easy chair, 1968, gold-painted laminated beech seat with silver upholstery. h 90cm.

3 Barbecue, 1968, stoneware hand-coiled in sections. h 160cm.

far too sensitive, with your sketch books … wouldn’t you like to go to art school?’ I was duly persuaded.

In 1964 I found myself starting a foundation course at High Wycombe College of Art and Technology, and although this college was famous for its furniture courses, I spent my time studying every aspect of art from life-drawing to sculpture, and hardly thinking of furniture design or touching a piece of wood. This was an enlightening period for me, as my previous exposure to art was limited to classes at school, a trip to the Royal Academy in London, and the handful of portraits and landscapes that were on display at home. I had only been vaguely aware of abstract art until I started at High Wycombe, so my early days as a student were a bit of a challenge. The teaching was inspired by the methods of the Bauhaus school, and involved a back-to-basics approach, encouraging students to draw as though they were children and to forget all their previous knowledge. For example, we studied the marks made in pencil on paper and the result-ing tension that was created with the white expanse of paper. Another experiment was to place coloured squares of paper on to paper of a different colour, to demonstrate that our assumed notions of colour were not to be trusted. The objective was to free us from any preconceived ideas we might have about art.

We were taken on educational visits to art galleries, and on one of these were chaperoned around a retrospective of Joan Miró’s work. I was confused at seeing such a large collection of images that at the time I thought could have been produced in a primary school. My idea of a great painting was a highly crafted representation of life, such as John Constable’s The Hay Wain.

Being young and impressionable I learnt quickly, and by the end of the year was making abstract installations and going to events staged by contemporary artists. I remember one that involved one of our lecturers who, dressed in a silver suit, dug a hole in the floor with power drills, and then filled it in again. On another occasion I went to an exhibition where, in order to get in, you had to squeeze through a brush like narrow slit formed by telephone directories and then walk through a collection of rooms displaying the grim side of life: a prostitute’s room with pornographic images stuck on the walls and a chest of drawers overflowing with detritus, a bathroom full of hanging carcasses, and others full of equally bizarre objects. To leave the show you had to climb through what seemed to be a giant bird’s nest full of feathers, emerging from this maze into a café in another build-ing, where everyone was engrossed in conversation, seemingly oblivious to the confusing experience or the visitors’ feather-covered clothes. My exposure to such examples of experimental 1960s art, together with the influence of the tight, abstract forms of the style of Bauhaus artists such as Gerrit Rietveld and Piet Mondrian, provoked me to experiment and find my own voice in art and design.

In 1965 I enrolled on a three-dimensional degree course at High Wycombe College, choosing furniture design as my main subject. I had enjoyed the foundation course but decided I would rather take a course in design than fine art. I could have applied to any college in the UK but, being rather nervous about going somewhere new, or losing touch with friends, and inspired by the idea of a furniture course, I stayed on at High Wycombe for the next three years. Gone was the experimental freedom of being an artist; now I had to learn some basic craftsmanship and produce objects that functioned properly. The course included two disci-plines other than furniture design, so as well as the crafts related to furniture we were introduced to ceramics and silversmithing. As part of the degree course we also had to practise life-drawing and sculpture, study the history of art, design, interior design and photography, and write a dissertation. The course had only been introduced the year before I started, and replaced a National Diploma in Design vocational course, which had been narrowly focused on technical drawing presentation, with no practical aspects of making or training in the crafts. Our new lecturers had the enthusiasm of recent converts, and stressed the importance of learning the basic crafts related to our design field.

The idea was that, by practising our skills, even at beginner level, we would by a process of osmosis produce designs that would combine practical function with a clear notion of a manu-facturing method, rather than just producing drawings of pretty shapes that we would then give to technicians or craftsmen to work up into real pieces. This approach was one used widely on new design courses in the 1960s, and was an attempt to emulate the successful techniques of the Bauhaus school.

One reason I decided to join a design course was that I had al-ways enjoyed making things, so that learning the craftsmanship required for the various disciplines was very stimulating. What I found hard was the expectation to conform to the tutors’ new ideal that the craft process should determine the outcome of the design. I had wanted to start from the visual aspect of a design and resolve the technical problems later. The tutors seemed to refer back to a nineteenth-century arts and crafts ideal, which regarded rural craft as the springboard for honest design, where the construction and marking-out details were left exposed and used as a feature of the design. This ideal was further developed at the Bauhaus, as seen in such products as their metal tubular furniture, which was made employing contemporary production methods and used unadorned materials as a design feature. The flamboyant style of the art deco period was looked on as flip-pant decoration. The Bauhaus concept was very popular among students, who used tubular chrome steel widely in their projects, based on the designs of Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier. I tried very hard to develop designs based on these principles but using laminated wood structures. I made a chair in the style of a

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4 rw at High Wycombe College, 1966, with his polyurethane chair covered in pink and brown stretch fabric, with acrylic tubular feet. h 80cm.

5 Moon-buggy table, 1971, made by Ron Lenthel at the rca, veneered with stained sycamore. h 25cm, top 55 x 55cm.

hoping to find a job as a furniture designer, I set out nervously into the world looking for work, armed with my small portfolio of college designs. I handicapped myself straight away by delib-erately not looking for a job in the furniture industry because of its wood bias; what I wanted was a job in a studio, designing products in coloured plastics and metal. In reality there were few such studios in 1971, and my interview skills were non-existent, so I soon realised I had to look in another direction if I was to become a successful designer.

Earlier that year I had married Nichola who was now expect-ing twins that would be born in six months time so had quickly to find a home and work even if it wasn’t in my chosen profession-rather a daunting challenge, fortunately my wife’s best friend, Mary, had just left Camberwell Art College and was also looking for work and for somewhere to live. Her partner Jeremy, who had also just left Camberwell, was living in a caravan in Kent and working for a company called Tudor Oak, making reproduction and mock antique furniture in a workshop in Cranbrook [PLATE 8]. The prospect of making reproduction furniture was anath-ema to me, and a job I would not have considered had it not been for Nichola and the imminent arrival of twins. After six months

6 Living-pod project made for final degree show, rca, 1971, fibreglass and steel.

could not resist the temptation of applying to study furniture design for a further three years, at the Royal College of Art in London. After an exam and an interview I was accepted on condi-tion that I got my degree at High Wycombe, which I managed only with difficulty, scraping through with a meagre pass as even the outside assessor hated my work [PLATE 4].

Thus I began my furniture design course at the Royal College of Art in 1969, confident that I could continue to design colourful and curvaceous furniture. Professor David Pye soon put a stop to that, and I was asked produce designs more in keeping with his design philosophy. This I tried for some time, but I eventually couldn’t resist going back to my own ways of using particular visual themes as inspiration.

The new architecture in London at that time – the concrete buildings of brutalism such as the Hayward Gallery, the towers of Ernö Goldfinger, and the high-rise flats that were springing up everywhere – bore no relation to my hippy design philosophy. These were utilitarian, machine-made objects with no colour or humanity, and I hated them. I lived in the age of the beautiful people, flower power, hippies and Woodstock, and wanted to produce work that reflected the aspirations and optimism of the time, not dreary, bunker-style designs. My interests lay in designing for a brighter future.

T H E M E S, S T Y L E S A N D D E S I G N SI followed the ideas of design movements such as Archigram, an English architectural group that was developing ideas for futur-istic pods to live in. I read science-fiction works and the reports and publicity covering the space race between the Americans and Russians, and watched the television coverage of Neil Armstrong stepping on to the moon in 1969. My designs at the time reflected this futuristic optimism; traditional pieces of furniture did not interest me, such as formal upright chairs and three-piece suites, that were designed to reflect the customs and requirements of my parents’ era. I was going to design furniture that suited the life that my generation led: lying around on cushions, listening to music, and eating from plates on our laps. The work at my degree show in 1971 included a space-frame living-pod that fea-tured seating, tables, storage and lighting, my acknowledgement to Professor Pye’s directive, the plan being that a whole modular structure would be erected in an interior and would fulfil all the functional requirements of a sitting room [PLATE 6]. There was a table in blue that had a moon-buggy appearance [PL ATE 5] and a chair with silver upholstery and a chrome and steel frame that was futuristic in style and didn’t remotely resemble the form of a traditional chair [7] [fig 6or6A 1971], both of which were reminiscent of my earlier work at High Wycombe.

The silver chair was photogenic and found its way on to the pages of the Times. The publicity filled me with confidence and,

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painting, Mary was painting watercolours of Romney Marsh and her partner Jeremy was designing architectural sculptures. It was idyllic for a short time for Nichola, the babies, eight kittens and me, growing vegetables and sharing meals with friends [PLATE 7].

Christopher, Jeremy and I would go off to work in the morning to begin our day of hard physical work in a dark, noisy workshop and come home to our partners in the picturesque farm cottage. It wasn’t long before we discovered that the work was too hard, the pay too low, and the pursuits of our various interests too dif-ficult to achieve, so after a year we drifted apart to look for our own solutions. I still had to earn a living to support my family, which for me meant staying on at the factory for another year. Although I was confused and unsure of the direction I was going in at this time, I now realise that living in the countryside must have had an effect on me, as a few years later I found it a great source of inspiration in my work.

By going to art college I had escaped a traditional craft educa-tion, which would have entailed learning all the craft skills one by one before being allowed to design. I feel fortunate as I’m sure that if I had gone to a traditional furniture school, I would have settled down and become a steady, sensible craftsman making and designing honest arts and crafts-style work of the kind that had been ticking over for the previous fifty years, and that was still evolving at that time in the workshops of practitioners such as Sidney Barnsley and Gordon Russell.

Although I had every intention of developing my own work after I’d finished my day’s stint at the reproduction furniture workshop, I didn’t have the energy and it became a very occa-sional practice. I did eventually make a few pieces in my spare time, but I knew that I was just dabbling, and it wasn’t until I left this labouring woodwork job that I started to concentrate on my own designs. This experience was one of the reasons why later on I decided not to become a full-time lecturer as, although it would

have allowed me to earn a steady salary, it would have meant I could only work on my furniture in the evenings or at weekends.

The biggest piece I made in this after-hours slot was a storage cabinet to hold my collection of LPs, a design developed from simple geometric shapes [PL ATE 10] . During the day I was making traditional oak furniture, but with my own work I ap-proached the construction from a different angle. Instead of us-ing solid wood with neat dovetails to create simple forms, I used plywood lipped and faced with oak, joining the pieces together with screws. I then covered and painted the plywood, treating it more as a film prop than a piece of furniture.

I left Tudor Oak late in 1973, and settled in Milton Keynes a year later, where I set up my own workshop. In the intervening time I slowly developed designs in borrowed workshops, mak-ing commissions for friends and relatives. The plywood and the paint disappeared and I made work entirely in wood. I still kept away from the more obvious traditional methods of construc-tion, experimenting instead with ways of creating simple forms that did not necessarily express the construction.

I became accustomed to designing with wood as my medium, and during this period imagery with art deco overtones gradually emerged, including ziggurats, contrasting colours and lines. This wasn’t a conscious decision, but was more the consequence of designing with geometric shapes that were fairly simple to make. My mother-in-law got silver steps on her cupboard [PLATE 11], while a wardrobe for my aunt was veneered in burr walnut, with linear patterns in box wood and kingwood [PL ATE 12] , both pieces being reminiscent of 1930s designs. In these early geo-metrical design experiments I was more interested in the surface design than in showing the constructional details. I would use a mixture of plywood and wood, and then paint or veneer the planes and facets; this method of design excited me, but as I progressed to using only wood I found the grain and the brown colour a problem.

of trying to find a job as a designer, the prospect of this one and of life in the country was appealing, so we decided to accept the challenge in a spirit of optimism, and moved to Kent in 1972.

We made an arrangement that the four of us, together with another couple, Christopher and Christine, would live together at a house called Fallconhurst Farm on Romney Marsh [PLATE 9]. Christopher and I had also been offered work at Tudor Oak, so together with Jeremy the three of us commuted to Cranbrook to work in the furniture factory.

Our intention was that we could all carry on with our cho-sen artistic aspirations in our spare time, while during the day Christopher, Jeremy and I would have employment at Tudor Oak; the bait for me was that I could develop my own designs after hours. This is how I started working in wood again. The other two couples were painters and sculptors, and planned to use their spare time developing their interest in landscape. Christopher was working on sculptures of birds, his partner Christine was

7 The start of the journey: rw and Nichola and family, 1972, Falconhurst Farm, Romney Marsh, Kent.

opposite

8 The workshop at Tudor Oak in Cranbrook, Kent, 1973, showing one of their pieces, a Jacobean-style oak table.

9 The good life! Falconhurst Farm in 1972. Left to right: Jeremy, Mary, rw, Nichola, Christopher, Christine, twins in pram.

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time in London I was desperate to find a way of earning an income from designing. In my search for a solution I looked up old friends and providentially got in touch with Philip Nelson, a college friend. He knew the furniture designer Martin Grierson, who let me use his workshop in a Covent Garden basement. I was soon experimenting and trying out ideas to satisfy my creative drive, something I’d missed since leaving college, mak-ing anything from toys and coloured picture frames to simple pieces of furniture. While these were good, stimulating projects, I soon realised that having been out of college for a couple of years I had to change direction if I was going to earn my living as a designer. Friends came to my rescue by giving me projects to make or buying some of my experiments. In my continual search for a more long-term solution I applied for and received a grant from the Crafts Advisory Committee to set up a workshop, demonstrating a chair I had just made as an example of the work I hoped to develop [PLATE 13]. I used this funding to convert my

mother’s garage in Milton Keynes into a workshop, and moved into a council house in the town with the family in 1974. For the next eighteen months I made anything that would help me build up skills and knowledge, and earn a little money, with friends and family giving me small projects to develop my own designs.

My designs gradually changed from the colourful fun ex-periments of my college days to rational solutions in wood with pieces of furniture that had a functional use and a traditional appearance. I chose wood because of my knowledge and experi-ence of the medium, although I knew that working in this mate-rial would restrict the shapes and structures I could make. I felt unable to follow the styles of contemporary designers whom I admired, such as the industrial designer Joe Colombo who was using plastic, or other designers who used metal. At the same time I was reluctant to follow the contemporary Scandinavian designers who worked in wood such as Hans Wegner, whose work reminded me of the styles of the 1950s. I had to find a

13 Chair, 1974, beech stained blue. h 110cm.

10 Storage cabinet, 1973, painted plywood with oak facings. h 165cm.

11 Storage cabinet and bookcase, 1975, Douglas fir with silver painted brackets. h 120cm.

12 Wardrobe, 1975, veneered with walnut; box-wood and kingwood inlay. h 170cm.

The colour of wood had always disconcerted me, as it dulls and changes over time. In the raw state it is wonderfully colourful, but as soon as it is exposed to light or polished it starts to change, becoming dark brown or grey. I spent all my time at college try-ing to escape from using wood, feeling that it was a dreary brown material and being familiar with furniture that had been covered with layers of grime built up after long exposure to the coal fires and years of polishing. There seemed to be no escape from French polishes, varnish and beeswax, which gave everything a brown skin. I had seen light woods used in furniture and had even made pieces from ash at school, enjoying the pre-polished appearance of the wood, but felt the finish was ruined by the yellowish hue the polish created.

Eventually I discovered polishes that had been developed since I was at school, which would protect the wood without leaving a yellow skin, so that white woods such as maple and sycamore retained their unpolished colour and looked clean. This led me to a decision that was to define my work for many years. I was interested in accentuating the planes and shapes that featured in my designs, and chose to use these light-coloured woods as base material, stressing aspects of the form with contrasting dark woods. I started by using these woods to form neutral structures and then highlighted the edges by inlaying dark wood, with the resulting lines not merely defining the form and structure of the piece but continuing over the surface to become decoration.

I moved to London in late 1973 with my wife and children, leaving behind the relative security of the job at Tudor Oak to live in my mother-in-law’s front room. We were there for six months, and survived on unemployment benefit. During this

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on a computer, as I find it easier to turn something around in my hands rather than having to imagine three dimensions on paper or screen.

I developed the chair of 1975 using this model-making pro-cess [PL ATE 15]. As with all design processes this one had its limitations and affected the design; in this case the simplicity was partly determined by the model. I first made a small, simple model using wood and pins to represent the proportions, which were based on those of the museum example. The model had a plain, solid back with no details of construction joints, and with this in front of me I started sketching and considering how to evolve a design that also incorporated my interest in contrast-ing woods. The solution came not from the sketches but from drawing directly on to the model, so suddenly this simple model became the foundation of the design.

The eventual design had a traditional overall form but, unlike the museum example that was decorated in lacquer, mine was in uncoloured blond maple with dark wood wenge inlay that high-lighted the edges of the form and, in some places, drew attention to the struc-ture and away from the constructional details. This combination of decoration highlighting structure, and structure used as decoration, is a theme that has informed my designs from college days until the present.

At the same time that I was design-ing this chair, I was also making an armchair in yew inlaid with stringing in contrasting ebony, which was based on a vernacular-style Windsor elbow chair [PLATE 23]. While the first chair heralded the start of a series of designs based on the lattice, the structural aspect of this second chair was the forerunner of most of the armchairs I later designed (see Chapter 4). I con-tinued with geometric themes for the next four years and was able to earn a living from these pieces, with the linear lattice feature becoming one of my trademarks, but as with any strong design feature it was hard to escape the perception that one could produce nothing different. Over time I gradually added curved elements to some designs, and in 1982 after a trip to California was

inspired and emboldened to make a bookcase based on aspects of landscape, using curves and imagery as the major features of the design [PLATE 16]. The original concept for this piece came from the image of a tree but, as the design developed and evolved to its final form, the obvious visual imagery became much more abstract. This process came about as I considered more deeply the functional needs of the piece and technical considera-tions of construction, and was a way of thinking that I would later repeat when designing other projects with naturalistic themes.

I still continued to develop designs

direction of my own.Eventually abandoning all thoughts of being avant-garde or

fashionable, I began to experiment with simple forms of chairs that had been developed in England over hundreds of years. I had in mind the pieces of antique furniture I had become familiar with over the years, with the objective of updating them. This meant a complete change from my student ideals of the 1960s, when I had challenged everything from the past, wanting to ditch all aspects of history and to design furniture for a future utopian age. The new approach was a big change for me, as I was virtually turning my back on my past dreams and setting off in a new direction, one that was underlined by the fact that I visited the Victoria and Albert Museum to look for inspiration, an in-stitution that I had previously considered a symbol of blinkered conservative thinking that didn’t embrace change.

As a college student I had believed the objective of a designer was to be avant-garde and that to look backwards was boring and unambitious. Now, after a rethink, I produced a piece of work for a RCA exhibition in 1976 that was inspired by a traditional eighteenth-century English chair at the Victoria and Albert Mu-seum, which had strong visual links to the original [PLATE 14]. This solution opened up new possibilities for me, as suddenly my designs seemed to be in demand, my work started to sell, and I was no longer an unsuccessful stubborn student with weird ideas. I was now a practising designer-maker, even if only work-ing from my mother’s small garage. This welcome development was also built on a growing design skill with which I was able to experiment. Since my early design efforts at school, the chal-lenge for me has been to translate my abstract thoughts about a design into reality, and the simplest way I achieved this was by drawing on paper. At college my drawing skills improved but I still found it a struggle to develop three-dimensional ideas. One of the approaches taught at college was to experiment directly with the craft itself, sketching constructional ideas rather than a precise image, so that the design evolved out of the craft rather than from the sketchbook. My desire had always been to develop visual ideas as far as possible before resolving the method of construction so I continued drawing as best as I could. It wasn’t until I mastered a way of constructing rough models quickly that I began to gain some control.

I needed to find a method of making models that wasn’t too precise and fixed, so that ideas could be easily changed. I tried using modelling clay and card and eventually, after years of ex-perimenting, developed a way of not being too precious about the model, rather like sketching, by using small sections of wood cut on a small bandsaw, shaping them on a small sanding machine and holding them together temporarily with plasticine, hot glue or metal pins. I still use this method, although my drawing rep-resentations have improved and I have learnt to create designs

14 Chair in lacquered wood dating from 1774, in the Victoria and Albert Museum Collection; illustrated as plate 44 in the museum’s publication, English Chairs, with an introduction by Ralph Edwards (1965 edn).

15 Dining chair, 1975, maple with wenge inlay. h 90cm. Victoria and Albert Museum collection.

opposite

16 Bookcase, 1982, mahogany structure veneered in macassar ebony, with gold-leaf mouldings, white holly shelves and back. h 220cm.

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so volunteered to help. Up to this point I had only used a com-puter for word-processing, but now became excited by the pos-sibilities it could offer in terms of images, colour and 3D design.

I soon discovered that working on computers altered the way I approached design and helped me greatly in presenting my ideas. I had previously designed by making conceptual sketches and evolving ideas through model-making, often developing the idea to a final design by use of these models, but now I imagined I could co-ordinate all these processes together.

The project that really got me started was a competition in 1997 to design a banqueting table to celebrate the fiftieth an-niversary of the Contemporary Applied Arts Gallery (CA A). I realised that this would give me an opportunity to experiment with computer-aided design (CAD). Never having designed on a computer before, I challenged myself to do so, using a CAD tool called form-Z, to work directly onscreen to create ideas rather than developing my thoughts with a pencil and sketchbook. The easiest forms to produce as a beginner are boxes so, with a teacher at my side helping me to grasp the complexities of the programme, my first design was an exercise in box arrangement [PLATE 18]. Although the design used simple elements, I felt I had found another potential tool to design with, and gained more confidence with the technique after I won the competition.

By using a computer-aided design programme I was able to develop an idea further in the early stages of a design process by constructing, onscreen, a sketch idea that I could then revolve and view from different angles. This allowed me to progress more ideas to the three-dimensional stage without commitment. By working a little more on the design, I could present a clear colour representation of it without the necessity for a model. This was very convenient for larger projects that were to be made

17 ‘Dancing table’, 1986, oak top on stained red legs. h 40cm.

18 Computer-rendered image of a banqueting table, 1997, produced for the caa competition [103] in 1997.

Repro: hold background dot top right

based on lattice and geometric forms while I was inwardly ab-sorbing the California experience, but after a couple of years I was again able to develop this more exuberant side of myself with a commission to make cupboards for the same room as the bookcase [PLATE 91].

I felt that a cupboard, which is really a box in shape, needed a different treatment from the sinuous curves of the bookcase, and in my search for a concept realised that rocks were suitable elements from which to evolve designs. I often start a naturalistic design with a close representation of the original inspiration, as with the tree and the bookcase, and with the cupboard, as I re-solved the structure with the function and materials, the design became more abstract. For this piece, I visualised the layers of rock in a cliff, where one sees different coloured strata of stones and fossils. The opportunity to develop these designs, based on ideas inspired from nature, did not arise very often. I had a gentle flow of customers commissioning work, on themes based on my early pieces, but not enough to be sufficiently rewarding or stimulating, so I decided, as a business venture, to try to develop a product that could be sold in large numbers and made by other people. I thought that this would enable me to continue develop-ing more one-off designs without customers, which I would sell directly to galleries.

In 1983, I was awarded a bursary from the Crafts Council to develop the technique of steambending wood (see Chapter 9). The intention was to produce a contemporary bentwood chair design that could be mass produced, inspired by Michel Thonet’s chairs of the nineteenth century, examples of which could be seen in virtually every café in Europe, so I had set myself a bit of a challenge. Over the course of six months I experimented, producing a series of prototypes in search of a winning design, but I was not happy with the results, and due to lack of funds decided to approach the problem from a different direction, as I didn’t want to abandon the production idea. I chose to com-bine wood and metal, with the steel-manufactured components made by a professional business next door to my workshop, and I would concentrate on the wooden parts. The result was a dining set of table and chairs that I exhibited at Prescote Gallery, near Banbury, in 1983 [PLATE 132]. I sold a set of the chairs to a res-taurant that was about to open, and pictures were also published in Homes and Garden magazine, but the orders I was hoping for failed to materialise, leaving me to concentrate again on one-off commissions.

I continued to experiment with the steambending process in a small way, using it in a number of one-off projects, notably a large set of boardroom office furniture. I also tried again with the batch-production idea, spurred on by the enthusiasm of a group who produced a mail-order catalogue of British crafts called Idea-logue. For this project, instead of producing work evolved from

the steambending method and using metal, I made the pieces from solid wood using geometric forms and colour [PL ATE 135]. Unfortunately the venture didn’t bring in any orders but, undeterred, I continued to promote this aspect of my work in the hope of creating a product that I could make in batches. My most successful design was a ‘Dancing Table’ [PLATE 17] one of a series I made with pointed legs, using solid wood with coloured legs. In 1986, I took a stand at a furniture exhibition at Olympia, London, again trying to promote this aspect of my work, unfor-tunately without success, so I decided not to experiment any further with production furniture and to concentrate on one-off commissions.

Between the years 1980 and 1996, apart from taking a few breaks to experiment, I was occupied with producing designs with a landscape theme alongside work based on symmetry with linear lattice themes. I also continued to exhibit one-off designs regularly at craft galleries. During this period there was very little that gave any indication of the change in direction my designs would take from 1997, with the exception of a sideboard I made in 1992 [PLATE 126] that consisted of a series of flat planes, and a small table with intersecting planes of 1991 [PLATE 45].

In 1996, I was working as a part-time lecturer in furniture design at Loughborough College of Art and Design. Magazines at that time were beginning to feature computer-generated illustra-tions of architectural designs, and it was common knowledge that cars were also being designed with computer programmes. The college already used computers in graphic design and now planned to extend this facility to its three-dimensional courses such as furniture. I was keen to try designing with the computer

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designed works based on rocks, again using the roughness of the wood but in this case to suggest stone. The first pieces I created [plate 138] [plate 100] evolved into a series of works that dominate the flat combining it with sawn white ash.

I had intended to produce all the furniture in the flat using CAD, but soon found that the programme restricted my ideas; it worked very well with large forms but proved too fiddly when working on the small frames of chairs. However, the process had generated some ideas that I wouldn’t have dreamt of by sketch-ing and model-making alone, so as a compromise I decided to struggle for a time on the computer until I felt that I had reached an impasse and then refined the idea through model-making. After this experience, starting a new design became something of a dilemma; I had to decide in each case whether to use the com-puter or the sketchbook with model-making, knowing that each way of working would take the design in a different direction.

In the course of my career I have always tried to go forward through experimentation with my designs, and the computer has helped me develop new themes and images. Looking back it is interesting to see how my designs have evolved as a direct result

of using CAD, as well as by the various inspirations I’ve had over the years, from my wild student experiments through a highly refined craft period, to my more recent direct sculptural state-ments. In the late 1960s I expected my designs to be criticised by the older generation because I thought I was creating something for the future. What I find surprising is that the work I made then is even today seen as very innovative, and that much of the work I make today, although I’m no longer trying to be avant-garde, is seen as a little too modern for some tastes [PLATE 21].

opposite

19 Reception desk, 1998, birch ply with coloured veneers. Commissioned by Milton Keynes Art Gallery.

20 Kitchen furniture, 2000, black sawn bog oak with English oak and limed ash.

below

21 Desk and armchair, 2012, ash with red leather used on the table drawers and chair seat. w 150cm.

Repro: neutralise and smooth background

by other craftsmen, as technical working drawings were easily produced while I was still working on the design.

Over the next couple of years, while I was learning to master designing on the computer, I won a series of large public com-missions, for Milton Keynes Art Gallery [PL ATE 19], Birming-ham Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Norwich Castle Museum, and Wavendon Stables Theatre. This was fortunate as it allowed me to continue experimenting with colour and form, something I had not been able to do productively since my college days. The first commission, for a reception desk for Milton Keynes Art Gallery in 1998, was funded by the Percentage for Art scheme, in which a small amount of the construction costs of a new build-ing were set aside to commission artworks. I was commissioned with a group of artists to produce work for the new theatre and art gallery. This meant that my design was looked on as some-thing different from a standard piece of fitted furniture. The final design integrated with the building design by Andrzej Blonski, to the extent that part of the desk cut through the glass walls.

I had continued to follow the trends and movements in archi-tecture since my college days, from modernism to postmodern-ism and up to the recent deconstructivist movement. The styles from the 1950s and 1960s didn’t generally inspire me, particularly brutalism, with its use of raw concrete, but I continued to take an interest because of the link between function and aesthetics that architecture explores. During the 1990s I noticed the work of the architects Frank Gehry and Daniel Libeskind, who were working under the deconstructivist banner, and felt that here was a move-ment that was inspiring. The approach seemed to coincide with

my own thinking, and I liked the way they fragmented forms and shapes, breaking away completely from traditional archetypes so that the buildings seemed to look to the future rather than the past.

In 2000, I was asked to undertake the complete furnishing of a small flat (see Chapter 10). This included the kitchen [PLATE 20] and eventually all the internal doors and the stair rail. I first met these customers at the Prescote Gallery in the early 1980s where they saw my games table and chairs and commissioned me to make four bedroom pieces (see Chapter 3). I have made many pieces for them since then and, through their relaxed patronage and enjoyment in encouraging me to experiment, have been able to develop my design ideas in new ways. The various directions I have taken in my designs – whether geometric, naturalistic, experiments with production, or my CAD work – have all been incorporated into the one-off pieces they have commissioned.

My work took a new turn when I was designing the furniture for the flat, with my use of bog oak, a wood that I was intro-duced to a few years earlier. This wood is black as a result of being submerged in peat bog for around 5,000 years. I took to it immediately as a substitute for rosewood, which was becoming as rare as ivory and equally unsustainable to use. As I have always designed in wood using contrasting colours it was very exciting to have a source of black; the conundrum was how to express its age and historical qualities. If I treated it as any other wood it would just be another smooth, black surface. I decided to leave the rough, saw-cut surface without sanding it down, thus leaving the texture untreated, which expressed an ancient quality. I then

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2 New chairs from traditional sources

After I left college in 1971 I worked hard to develop a career de-signing furniture, and tried all sorts of approaches. I had my own workshop, and was receiving orders from customers outside the small ring of friends and relatives who had supported me in the early stages. I had just exhibited a collection of new work at the Master Craftsmen exhibition in 1976, a furniture show put on by the Royal College of Art, London, for past students. Some of the work was sold, I received orders for new work, and was invited to exhibit work in other shows that in turn led on to further com-missions, so I felt that I had made the first step up the ladder of my career. My home was in Milton Keynes, a new town still in its infancy with only a few roads and houses, but the Milton Keynes Development Corporation was interested in encourag-ing cultural growth alongside other amenities such as shopping centres and open spaces. They employed an artist-in-residence, Canadian-born Liz Leyh, who is famous for her concrete cows (she also held life-drawing classes that I attended), and also a craftsman-in-residence, Brian Glassar, who later made metal-work for a couple of my pieces, a backgammon table [PL ATE 40] and a chest of drawers [PLATE 38]. Milton Keynes offered cheap workshops to encourage new businesses, which was an advantage for me – but the main reasons I decided to move there were that my mother lived there and had space in her garage for me to set up a free workshop, and that I’d received a grant from the Crafts Advisory Committee (CAC), and renting a corporation (council) house was easy at that time.

The CAC played a very important role at the start of my career. I had been living in the countryside for nearly three years after I left the Royal College, concentrating on earning money to look after my family, so was unaware of the sudden popular resur-gence of British and American crafts, or of the role that the CAC had played in this revival. Victor Margrie, a practising potter, had been elected as Chairman, with a brief to raise the profile of British crafts and show the public that they were a national asset

22 Cupboard, dining chair and table, 1976, made for the Royal College of Art’s Master Craftsmen exhibition in 1976.

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to be proud of. He put on exhibitions at the Victoria and Albert Museum and at the CAC ’s new offices in Waterloo Place, near The Mall, showing the latest work that was being produced by re-cent design graduates from the 1960s, together with established practitioners like the studio potter Lucie Rie and the furniture-maker Edward Barnsley, who had been producing work since the 1930s. Alongside these exhibitions, various private galleries and shops were springing up, such as Electrum Gallery in London, Coexistence in Bath, and the Prescote Gallery near Banbury, all of which were exhibiting an impressive range of British crafts that would previously only have been seen by a narrow audience. My success at the RCA’s Master Craftsmen exhibition brought me into contact with this craft revival, and I began to be part of it, with my work from the CAC exhibitions and the Prescote Gallery being featured in books and magazine articles.

I had produced five pieces for the Master Craftsmen exhibition during 1975 and 1976, and each of them would inform my design work for many years to come. The dining set [PLATE 22] was in light-coloured maple wood with contrasting wenge inlays; the chair had a lattice back, the table had a triangulated under-frame, and the cupboard included a ribbon feature that formed the leg brackets and flowed around the cabinet. An armchair, which had been commissioned by a college friend, Lars E. Hokanson, was the first of a series based on a structural arrangement I devised for combining the back legs with the arms [PLATE 23], and the stool, in arts-and-crafts style, had a simple structure made in cherry wood that incorporated kingwood stretchers and dowels and a caned seat [PL ATE 24] . The chair was acquired by the Victoria and Albert Museum; the cupboard was later bought by

the Warwick Arts Trust; I received orders for the stool and the dining table was given to a friend.

Early in 1976 when I was developing designs for the Master Craftsmen exhibition, in my search for inspiration I found an eighteenth-century Chinese lacquered chair on a visit to the Victoria and Albert Museum that I thought would be an ideal format for a new design. I liked the size and proportions, and the ergonomically designed ‘s’-shaped back. Surreptitiously I made a sketch and took rough measurements, and returned to my workshop to resolve a new design. I had recently reworked a Victorian-reproduction Windsor elbow chair from the 1950s that I’d rescued from a skip [PLATE 25], and using a museum piece seemed different.

First I made a preliminary scale-drawing, simplifying the design by using straight lines except for the curve of the back, adjusting the size to what I thought was appropriate for contem-porary dining furniture. Then I made a one-fifth scale model of this drawing in wood, curving the back legs that held the shaped support, with two straight front legs set wider apart, and with rails to hold a drop-in upholstered seat. I started to sketch ways in which I could generate the design based on this model, but soon found it was easier to stick the sketches on to the model to see them in three dimensions. I had previously made an armchair in darkish wood highlighted by ebony wood [PLATE 23], and would probably have used the same combination had I not put the white paper on the model and realised that white maple would be an ideal base combined with a dark, outlining wood. At this time my design ideas were directed towards making three-dimensional graphic results, in which the shapes and the decoration combine,

opposite

23 Armchair, 1975, mahogany veneered with yew; ebony inlay. h 80cm.

24 Stool, 1975, cherry with kingwood stretchers and dowels, and caned seat. One of six. h 65cm.

25 Windsor elbow chair, 1950s, solid elm seat with turned beech legs and spindles, which inspired my armchair of 1975 [23]. h 80cm.

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with the mechanics of the structure remaining hidden. This dif-fers from an arts-and-crafts approach, in which the mechanics, such as dovetail joints, are exposed and become the decoration. The model with the paper design was very effective, with its simple form and dark outline, and I wanted to find a way of con-structing the chair that would not detract from this. The mitre tenon joint on the front legs seemed to solve the problem and, with further drawing, the back lattice design emerged. The sim-ple form and structure together with the linear design seemed to me the ideal combination. One plane seemed to follow on to the next, even around the corners, without the interference of constructional details. The V&A bought the chair, having seen it at the Master Craftsmen show [PLATE 26] , and this was a great boost to my confidence. I felt I had devised a successful format, and over time have made many variations on it.

As I received commissions requesting different styles, I found this simple design an ideal prototype. My first commissioned chairs, made in maple and rosewood, were designed for an inte-rior inspired by the art-deco period [PLATE 30]. The construc-tion involved learning how to laminate wood in a mould for the back, but otherwise the basic framework construction was the same as the prototype.

The next piece was designed for a home in Kuwait, and I used simple Arabic motifs in the design [PLATE 28]. To achieve a cross-lattice design for the back, I had to create a very thick section mesh with the joints at the crossing-points in the right place. I then carved this down to produce the serpentine lumbar support shape; the work took so much time that even though there were only four chairs, I decided this was going to be the last time I would make anything as time-consuming. I did make a simpler version for a customer who had business links with Arabia [PLATE 29], but then resolved I would never make this particular construction again. In 1986, Buckinghamshire County Museum in Aylesbury asked me to make a chair as an example of my work, and I decided to make one that showed my skills as a craftsman, based on the original model that had been bought by the V&A, but with many more curves and fine details [PLATE 27]. The museum also bought the paper drawings and models, and displayed them alongside the chair, in a display case. This seemed a bit surreal to me, as I had thought that I was making a

27 Dining chair, 1986, sycamore with walnut inlay. One-off made for Buckinghamshire County Museum, Aylesbury. h 90cm.

28 Dining chair, 1977, sycamore with walnut inlay. One of four made for a backgammon table [40]. h 990cm.

26 Dining chair, 1975, maple with wenge inlay. h 90cm. Victoria and Albert Museum collection.

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including a set of ten dining chairs in sycamore for Great Dixter, East Sussex, the house owned by the gardener and writer Chris-topher Lloyd, in 1987 [PL ATE 31] and, most recently, a chair I made for my daughter which marks a small departure from the original design [PLATE 33]; the inlay has gone; the shape differs from the original, with a slimmer back and a curved seat; and the emphasis has shifted from delicate detailing to a bolder stress on the wood grain. However, the distinctive tapering back legs and use of contrasting materials of the original remain. I was very lucky to have discovered this design solution for a chair in 1976, as I have been able to develop many variations on the design, and hope to make many more.

31 Dining chair, 1988, laminated ebony with figured sycamore. One-off. h 90cm.

32 Dining chair, 1987, sycamore with walnut inlay. One of ten made for Great Dixter. h 90cm.

practical chair for sitting on rather than a sculpture. Once again, I hoped that this was going to be the finish of this design theme, as I wanted to develop new chairs from a fresh inspiration.

The format was too good to part with, however, and in 1987 when Sotheby’s was planning an auction of contemporary crafts, I made a pair to the original design along with a small table. A year later, I was working on pieces for an exhibition and decided to make another chair using this base and incorporating some new features. I made a chair with ebony, as I had just bought a small log of this rare wood in auction, and used figured sycamore as the contrasting wood on the back [PLATE 31], with the design reflecting the curving naturalistic shapes I was using in my other work at the time.

These variations on the theme made me realise how useful and flexible the formula was, especially as it was widely appreci-ated and I didn’t have to keep reinventing the chair. I continued to use it frequently, especially when making work without a commission. I designed various pieces based on this design

29 Hall chair, 1984, sycamore with walnut inlay. One of two. h 90cm.

30 Dining chair, 1978, sycamore with walnut inlay. One of ten, made for a round dining table [39]. h 90cm.

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33 Dining chair, 2008, figured ash with black walnut inlay. One of six. h 90cm.

opposite, clockwise from top left

34 Dining chair, 1988, sycamore with walnut inlay. One of two, auctioned at Phillips, Oxford. h 90cm.

35 Cantay boardroom chair, 1993, black walnut with sycamore. One of eight. h 90cm.

36 Dining chair, 1996, red oak from the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew. One-off. h 90cm.

37 Dining chair, 1992, black walnut with sycamore. One of eight. h 90cm.

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The most important event that occurred directly after the RCA’s Master Craftsmen exhibition – and one that really propelled my career forward – was an invitation to display most of my work from the exhibition in the window alongside their own interior furniture at Albrizzi, a shop in Sloane Square, at the heart of fashionable London. This led directly to two introductions, and I came to London to meet these potential customers.

These visits were enlightening experiences for a diffident hippy living in a council house in Milton Keynes. The first was to a penthouse in Grosvenor Square, Mayfair, where I walked into the entrance hall to see a painting by Fernand Léger dis-played on an easel; in the reception room great floral displays filled whole side tables in a room nearly as big as my house. I was led through to the dining room designed by Max Glendinning, which reminded me of pictures I had seen of a 1930s P&O liner, and was asked to design a dining suite consisting of a table and ten chairs.

The second visit was to someone who was staying in a flat in Park Lane. I was one of a number of visitors showing their wares while the customer lay on his day bed. ‘Have you seen my boat?’ he asked me. Taken aback for a moment, I soon realised he meant the model on the sideboard. He asked me to design a breakfast table that would convert into a backgammon table, together with four chairs, intended for his beach chalet in Kuwait [PLATE 40]. I returned to my small garage workshop in a state of shock, to create furniture that would fit into an art-deco interior for a London penthouse, and to design a table and chairs with an Arabic theme for a beach chalet. I had never undertaken such large commissions before, and was very excited.

The brief for the dining suite was to design a round table, the customer’s preference, which would accommodate ten chairs [PLATE 39, 30]. The design was to reflect the style of the table and chairs displayed at Albrizzi’s, and the complete set had to harmonise with the interior. I tackled the chair design first,

3 Albrizzi and Prescote

38 Chest of drawers, 1981, figured sycamore with black walnut legs, bronze handles made by Brian Glassar. h 100cm.

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40 Backgammon table with four chairs for a beach chalet in Kuwait, 1977; table in sycamore, top veneered in bird’s-eye maple with walnut inlay, decorative centrepiece in silver with mother-of-pearl inlay, made by Brian Glassar; chairs in sycamore with walnut inlay. Table w 120cm; chair h 90cm.

adapting the back of the chair that the customer had seen to reflect some of the curved details of the interior, using maple and rosewood, a combination used in the 1930s [PLATE 30]. The table evolved from the one I had exhibited at the Master Crafts-men exhibition [PLATE 22], with a circular top and a decorative structural underframe that linked visually with patterns on the table-top. I used the same linear decorative design that was used in the interior as the basic motif for both the table and the chair.

The designs were accepted, so the challenge was then to make this quantity of furniture in my mother’s garage. Most of the space was filled with the few machines I had bought with the CAC grant – a bandsaw, a thickness planer, a primitive router – along with my workbench and my mother’s deep-freeze. Many of the methods I would have to employ were only known to me through books, but I somehow managed to resolve the various design problems I was confronted with in executing the designs. The bending of the wood was achieved with a Heath Robinson contraption and a bit of bodging. The veneering of the table-top was also a new venture; I used an antique method where the veneer is stuck down with hot animal glue using a home-made veneer hammer. I eventually finished the project with the help of my mother, who was very accommodating and allowed me to store the finished chairs in her spare bedroom. The result fitted well with the interior, was very much appreciated by the customer, and is still in use today, years later, by her daughter, who commissioned a larger table, two armchairs, two sideboards

[PLATE 178] and, more recently, a fire surround. In design terms, however, I haven’t pursued this stylistic imitation any further.

It was as a result of the work I created for the Kuwaiti cus-tomer that I was able to move in a new design direction. Instead of designing the chair first, I started with the table, as this was the bigger challenge, with the brief stipulating that it was to be used as a breakfast as well as a backgammon table. This meant that the gaming table-top had to be hidden underneath while a different top was for used for breakfast.

As backgammon is played by four people, the plan had to be square, and I chose to put a leg on each corner. The solution that I devised to access the games table involved using four triangular envelope-shaped flaps that folded outwards as in origami; when these were closed the outlines of the flaps formed a square within a square on the table-top, turned at 45 degrees. This produced triangular shapes in the corners of the table-top which, when closed, reminded me of the design on the back of my first chair of 1975 [PL ATE 26], as well as a recently finished commission for a small hall table, for which I had used diagonal banding that flowed around the form and performed both a structural and decorative function.

I had resolved the basic function and outline of the design, a square table, with a top that had diagonal joint lines formed by the opening triangular flaps. Using the top features I created a diagonal pattern of parallel inlaid lines that extended over the edges of the top becoming a lattice-like structure that supported

39 Dining table, 1977, Part of a dining suite with ten chairs [30], rosewood and sycamore. Diameter: 160 cm.

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all over the country. Marketing is a skill that most craftspeople lack, and although the CAC promoted designers through grand showcase exhibitions, they relied on government funding and so the emphasis was on presentation, whereas the Prescote Gallery had to sell work to survive. It represented the best of two worlds: a private enterprise introducing craftspeople to a buying public, and a gallery that was willing to exhibit the best of design in all its forms even if it might not be commercially viable. As a result people who had never previously seen modern crafts started commissioning work and becoming collectors. British arts and crafts were now featured much more widely than before in the national press, with journalists praising the quality of the work being produced, and this helped to generate interest among the public to visit the gallery.

The small café helped to create a congenial and relaxing atmos-phere, where visitors and craftspeople could bring their families and meet each another. On one occasion, a couple who became future customers of the gallery were on a barge holiday nearby and happened to call in; they had never bought any crafts before but after this visit became avid collectors. It was also here that I

met my most adventurous customers, while I was on a day trip with my wife and family. These customers were to become good friends, and they were so excited by the backgammon table and chairs that were on display before being transported to Kuwait, that they asked me to come up and stay with them in Scotland to discuss a commission. This was to design a chest of drawers for their bedroom, to replace an eighteenth-century mahogany one currently in place there. The project started with a visit in October 1979. I always enjoy visiting the place for which I am to design a work, because it gives a feeling of scale and an inner relationship with the space. It adds a sort of completeness to the whole design process, linking the environment and function together with the aesthetic. Sketch designs were sent in February 1980 and I visited again in March. Designs and price were agreed and the work was delivered in March 1981 [PLATE 38]. Looking back, I am surprised how long the commission took, although fortunately this did not deter these customers, as they went on to order two bedside tables, an armchair and a small table for the same room [PLATE 179/43]. Over the course of the next twenty years or so, I made pieces for the whole house.

the corner legs [PLATE 41]. At this stage it struck me that this graphic imagery was similar to Arabic decoration, so I empha-sised it further with the design of the centre handle. I also tapered the table legs as I had for the back legs of the original chair,as I like the way this feature anchors a form to the ground rather than giving the impression that the object could walk away on stilts or feet. This produces a visual result that I have used many times, but it causes a number of structural problems because tapering the legs means that you can only use small joints where the legs meet the rest of the form, whereas there should ideally be large sections of wood at this point to make a simple, strong junction. In this case, I made a lightweight lattice with many little joints rather than one big efficient one; although this solved the struc-tural problem, it was difficult and expensive to make. The benefit of continuing with these lightweight structures is purely visual.

The chair design was again based on the original exhibition piece, using a white foundation of sycamore with inlaid dark lines, with the back design reflecting the table detailing. The table was finally made in sycamore with the top veneered in bird’s-eye maple and inlaid with walnut, with the decorative centrepiece, made by Brian Glassar in silver inlaid with mother-of-pearl, working as an inset handle to open the table flaps.

This set of the backgammon table and four chairs was ex-hibited at the Prescote Gallery in Cropredy, near Banbury in Oxfordshire, to much acclaim. It was included in the annual design book, Decorative Art and Modern Interiors, in 1979, and in the Telegraph there was an article on the piece headlined ‘Chairs Worthy of Chippendale’. I delivered the work to the back door of the flat in Park Lane, and I believe it was shipped from there to its destination in Kuwait.

The Prescote Gallery was founded in 1977, after the death in 1974 of the Labour Cabinet Minister, writer and Editor of the New Statesman, Richard Crossman, by his widow Anne and her friend Ann Hartree [PLATE 42]. It was located at the Crossman’s home near Banbury, with Anne Crossman running the café and Ann Hartree the exhibition space. At the time, it was the only gallery in Britain to exhibit new experimental furniture, which was shown alongside other contemporary applied arts, painting and sculpture. The gallery exhibited virtually all the practising craftspeople who were working in Britain at the time, from Ed-ward Barnsley, the figurehead of the arts and crafts movement, and his followers like Alan Peters, to contemporary designers from the Royal College of Art such as Fred Baier and Richard La Trobe-Bateman. The gallery was one of the few places I was able to exhibit my work before it disappeared into the customers’ homes. It has always been difficult for me to advertise my work without making speculative designs, so I was extremely grate-ful for this opportunity. Ann Hartree was a marvellous catalyst for British crafts, and attracted journalists and customers from

41 Plan drawing of backgammon table, [40].

42 Ann Hartree’s Prescote Gallery, Cropredy, Oxfordshire, in 1983. The picture shows a sofa by Floris van de Broecke and a table and chair by Richard La Trobe-Bateman.

43 Table, 1982, figured sycamore with black walnut legs. h 45cm.

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One of the reasons for my slow progress with this commission was the change in my circumstances. In 1978, I was working on a commission making a dining table and twelve chairs [PLATE 44] as a result of the customer seeing the chair that had been purchased by the V&A [PL ATE 26] . I had just come off state benefit and was struggling to find the money to support my wife and the two children. Owing to my small working space, I made half of the chair parts for this commission and stored them in the attic while I made the other half, but when I came to fit them together, they didn’t match. This was an enormous mistake on my part and it shocked me so much that I spent the next six months or so achieving little in terms of constructive work. I had been working squashed in my mother’s garage where I started the business in 1974, promising myself that I would only be there for six months, but in fact staying there for over four years. In 1979, I moved out to share a contemporary industrial unit in Milton Keynes with some friends, which was a big change and caused a bit of turmoil. I began by employing two crafts-men, Philip and John, students from Rycotewood College. At the same time I moved from a council house in Wolverton to a small terraced house in Stony Stratford, still in Milton Keynes, which also entailed employing builders to reconstruct the whole build-ing; and on top of all this I took on a part-time teaching job. The entire period was so frenetic that I’ve blocked most of it out of my mind, but eventually I finished the twelve chairs and recovered my composure. In 1980, I moved into my own workshop nearby in New Bradwell, where I stayed for the next twenty years, and it was here that the chest of drawers and most of the furniture for Scotland was made.

Some designs take longer than others to bring to fruition, and the chest of drawers was one that took a while to take shape. As a designer, I have ongoing negotiations with my customers throughout the production process, providing them with a final and agreed design that fits the brief. I am always trying to push my designs into new areas, whereas most customers prefer to commission something similar to a piece I’ve already made. The most fruitful results are often produced when the customer is demanding, without trying to design the piece for you. At the beginning of our relationship, these Scottish customers tended to be fairly critical of my efforts, and the first drawings for this design were returned from them with alterations that they thought improved the design. Always tentative about my own ideas, I felt open to a certain amount of criticism, although I found it a bit of a strain. I looked again more closely at the design I’d sent, and improved it by restraining the forms and simplifying the decorative lines. I was using the original eighteenth-century chest that was being replaced, as a model to develop my new design around, applying the same basic proportions and drawer arrangement. I had found a similar approach successful in 1976,

44 Dining table with expanding leaves and twelve chairs, 1979; table with solid English walnut top; chairs in ripple sycamore. w 120cm.

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because of the expense, but this time I bought the whole lot, as it was so special, and it became the veneer for all these bedroom pieces. It was an enormous challenge to use as it had dried out over time and was badly warped, so I had to dampen and flat-ten it before it was usable. After this commission and the earlier games table [PLATE 40] I felt proficient enough to use veneered surfaces for most projects, as I was now able to create decorative surfaces linked to a structure that, unlike solid wood, was not going to shrink, expand or warp. Over the following eight years I made many pieces using veneered surfaces and incorporating the lattice features that I used for my original chair made in 1976, the largest of which was a cutlery canteen, made in rosewood and satinwood [PLATE 46].

As well as this hard-edged geometric style, I was experiment-ing with other ideas inspired by the natural world (see Chapter 5), but the next piece I designed with a historical influence was not until 1983, when these Scottish customers asked me to make them a desk. The brief was to replace a traditional drop-leaf bu-reau in a room dominated by a striking mid-Edo period Japanese screen that depicted a scene from The Tale of Genji, which was to be placed behind the desk. I struggled hard with this design in my attic studio, trying to produce a piece that would be func-tional, and that would relate to the screen but also be new and original. The first designs were not successful, and I needed to reach an acceptable solution fairly quickly before the custom-ers went abroad, as I was short of work and money. I remember rushing to see them in London with the new design, the car key

46 Canteen with fitted drawers, 1981, rosewood frame and legs with satinwood doors. h 130cm.

when I used the antique chair from the V&A as a framework for my chair design [PL ATE 26]. I had two particular concerns at the time: firstly, how I could devise a construction that made the object seem to float in the air, a feature I had developed for one of my college projects that was all on stilts; and, secondly, how to connect all the elements together – the structure, the body, the legs, and the other parts such as the handles. The latter problem was resolved in all four bedroom pieces by using a mixture of inlaid lines and thin structural rails.

The small table [PL ATE 43] varies slightly from the theme because with this design I was also experimenting with forms and constructions that weren’t in the traditional lexicon of fur-niture design. I used organic shapes contrasted with diagonal structures, a theme that was a forerunner of my later, asymmetric

designs, such as a bedside table I made in 1995 [PLATE 45].Nearly all my work during this period revolved around the

use of white wood, either sycamore or maple, contrasted with a darker wood such as rosewood, cherry or black walnut. For these bedroom pieces, I used a stable composite board material that I lipped with solid wood and veneered to make large, thin surfaces that would have been impossible to make in solid wood. This also gave me the opportunity to use exotic woods that were only available in veneer form. On one of my sorties to Crispin veneer suppliers in the East End of London I came across a pile of very old and extraordinarily rippled sycamore, so highly figured that it looked more like satinwood. The bundle had been around for years, stored under the old roof, and had become damaged with water stains. Usually I only bought a few sheets of veneer

45 One of a pair of bedside tables, 1995, figured sycamore with walnut. h 50cm.

Repro: neutralise background tones

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this room, I made a round book table with a saucer edge and a waste-paper basket in the same genre [PLATE 177].

In 1984, after I had delivered the hornbeam desk, I was asked to make two armchairs and a table for the sitting room the latter was to act as a desk, and would replace a small, refectory-type table and stand in front of the bookcase I made in 1982 [PLATE 50] . As the bookcase was mostly made of dark wood and its design naturalistic in style, I decided to create a contrasting piece. The design I resolved for the table and chairs is rooted in the same inspiration behind the furniture I produced for the Master Craftsmen exhibition of 1976 and includes similar features, with the sculptural underframe linking with the inlay on the table-top, and the carved back legs of the armchairs linking the arms with the back in one sweeping curve. These back legs are

a development of legs I had used in my first armchair [PL ATE 23]; in this case the leg is carved twisting from a rhomboidal foot rising up fitting closely to the seat frame, eventually becoming a flowing, thin and comfortable back support [PLATE 56]. The table, hexagonal in shape, is veneered in holly, a tight-grained creamy white wood, and inlaid with black walnut. Two flaps in the table-top open to expose a leather-lined interior with integral bookstands [PLATE 51].

The sitting room for which the table and chairs were made fea-tured two contrasting styles of my work: a bookcase developed on a naturalistic theme, and now these pieces. When I was asked to design a cabinet for the same room in 1984 I had a problem deciding which direction to follow. In the study next door I had made a hornbeam desk with Japanese references [PL ATE 48]

breaking in the ignition, not being able to find the address, and being very late; not a good start, and then the design turned out to be not quite right.

The final design was based on a simple pedestal arrange-ment, with a table-top supported by two narrow curving plinths containing drawers. I didn’t want to use the lattice theme or the nature-inspired designs I’d created for the bedroom, and also limited myself to using solid hornbeam, a wood I had recently started using that was white-grey with a light rippled appear-ance, rather than using sycamore as I had for the bedroom pieces. I felt that the design had to relate to the Japanese screen, and was lucky to choose the image of a Japanese religious gate called a to-rii as a reference, as I had very little knowledge of Japanese styles. The resulting design had the two narrow ends of the rectangular table surface curving upwards as in the top beam of the torii, with the pedestals forming the upright, flowing upwards from a wide base to link with the desktop ends. This solution meant that the drawers had to be small and curved, and it was fortunate that there was no great need for storage [PLATE 48].

The design was finally accepted in this form, using hornbeam as I had intended. It works well, with its strong, simple shape, decorative lines and discreet drawer handles. As usual I had set myself a constructional challenge because all the drawers had curved sides and were different sizes, and I was also using solid hornbeam which, unknown to me, had been used traditionally for windmill cogs, as it was rock hard; it was also very unstable and twisted with the slightest change in temperature.

I also made two chairs at a later date in hornbeam, with steambent curved legs and arms [PL ATE 49] . In addition, for

47 Sketch drawing for writing desk, 1984.

48 Writing desk, 1984, hornbeam with walnut inlay. w 150cm.

49 Pair of armchairs, 1984, steambent hornbeam. h 90cm.

opposite

50 Interior with table / desk and bookcase, 1985.

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sometimes unconsciously, that have been successful in earlier designs, hoping to be able to develop the idea further. This can easily be seen in the first jewellery casket that I made in 1987 for a couple in Oxford [PL ATE 53]. The top consists of triangular shapes that open up in a similar way to the games table made for the customer in Kuwait in 1977 [PL ATE 40] , this time the top only half-opens, acting as a frame for the jewellery inside. The triangular shapes link back to the original dining chair of 1976, but now resemble Japanese origami. The completed design has fully extending drawers, is decorated with a carefully inlaid lozenge-pattern veneer and inlaid rhodium-plated silver lines, and has become the base for a series of cabinets.

52 Two views of Cabinet, 1984, veneered in holly with black walnut inlay. w 150cm.

53 Two views of Jewellery casket, 1987, figured sycamore with silver, rhodium-plated fittings. h 35cm.

and, after making a lot of sketches that led nowhere, decided to use the Japanese theme to link the two rooms together. I had seen kimonos on display hung on a horizontal pole that held the two sleeves on either side of the body of the tunic. This produced a flat image of the graphic design that was embroidered or printed across the shape. What interested me was the way a symmetrical object could have another design placed on it that cut across the piece at an oblique angle. Translating this idea into furniture, I made a symmetrical box cabinet, cut through by a horizontal top with turned-up ends, with the whole piece veneered in holly. I then placed an inlaid design obliquely across the sideboard, in black walnut [PLATE 52].

When I am designing a new project, I pick out relevant ideas,

51 Hexagonal table with desk, 1985, veneered in holly with black walnut inlay. h 73cm. Shown with one of a pair of armchairs, 1985, sycamore with walnut. h 90cm.

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4 The evolution of armchairs

I have always found designing chairs the most interesting and challenging aspect of my work. It involves trying to solve the structural problems of an object that includes a seat, back and arms in fixed positions, and relating this to an aesthetic idea. One has to work within tight boundaries of size and function, but there are myriad solutions. In 1995 when designing a desk and armchair for a commission, I tried to resolve the conundrum in my sketchbook by producing a drawing with one of my favourite armchair features in which a leg transforms into another part of the chair [PLATE 55]. I have experimented with this feature since my first armchair commission in 1975 [PLATE 23] and it is a common element in most of the armchairs I have designed since.

My interest in this particular feature started in 1975 when Lars E. Hokanson, a painter friend from my college days at the RCA, had just finished a commission for Lord Bath and decided to spend part of the fee on a desk chair from me. We were dis-cussing the project while I was sitting on a Windsor elbow chair that I had rescued from a skip [PLATE 25]. Lars said he wanted something comfortable with a round back so that he could move around easily, like the chair I was sitting on, so we decided that I would base the design on this Windsor elbow chair. The chair from the skip had a solid elm seat with turned beech legs and spindles wedged into it, with the curved arms and back, also in beech, resting on the top spindles. As neither Lars nor I wanted a chair with turned spindles, I began trying to resolve a design through making scale models. At college, I would have had to use card and balsa wood for the model, which I found very difficult, but now I was able to use machinery (not allowed at college for safety reasons), so I made one-fifth scale models in solid wood that gave a very good representation of the eventual design.

After some time I resolved the design through this method. I knew that I wanted the round arms and back as in the original and a seat in a certain position, so looked for a simple way of

54 Armchair for writing desk, 1995, laminated figured sycamore with black walnut, upholstered in suede. h 90cm.

55 Sketch of armchair, [plate 54].

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finishing at the top in a gothic arch that also resembles a mitre. My problem was how to make this complex design, with all the curved rails crossing at different angles. Inspired by the work of the American furniture designer Wendell Castle, I constructed the chair by glueing together pieces of solid cherry wood into a large form that was close to what I needed and then carving the shapes out of the solid wood. Wendell Castle was well known for using a similar technique in his furniture-making in which he laminated together large pieces of wood and carved them with machine-tools, a method more common among stonemasons than cabinetmakers. This chair with its carved form is atypical of my work, but I liked the freedom of shaping wood that Wen-dell’s working method offered, and it was soon to influence my approach to my furniture that was inspired by organic forms.

The next opportunity that arose to develop a carved back leg to fit with a semicircular seat came with a desk chair in 1985 [PLATE 56] where, instead of the back leg being straight as it had been in my armchair of 1975 [PL ATE 23] , I decided to emphasis the curved twisting nature of the transition from a rhomboid foot to an oblong top. It was very labour intensive to make, and had to be carved by hand from a large piece of timber. For many craftsmen the object becomes easier to make as the design develops but, in my case, as I overcome one problem I seem to create another one. The development of this particular armchair certainly didn’t get any easier, as each vertical back slat had to be carved and then jointed to a three-dimensional curving arm.

The process I use in developing my design ideas could be the cause of these difficult construction problems, as most of my furniture-making progresses through the same stages, of sketches then models, rather than through flat technical draw-ings on paper. It is easy to make something to a one-fifth scale using glue and pins and a sanding-machine and to ignore the constructional problems at that stage, because the visual aspect seems all-important. This can be a handicap, because I get excited and then dive into making the final full-sized version with only a vague idea of how to construct the piece of furniture. Although I always seem to find a solution, I don’t unfortunately learn from this ad-hoc approach and continue to find myself faced with what sometimes seem impossible problems.

I think I chose this way of adapting the design to practical technical issues as they occur because it is so difficult to resolve all the details on the drawings or models. On the other hand, this empirical approach does give me the opportunity to refine the work in progress, and if I later tackle the same design again it can be developed in another direction from the same beginnings.

Three upholstered armchairs I made between 1988 and 1992 have all evolved from the desk armchair, one carved out of golden rippled satinwood [PLATE 59], one from dark red Indian rose-wood [PLATE 61], and the third from satinwood [PLATE 60].

Master Craftsmen show at the RCA two years earlier [14], so chose the plan of the armchair [PL ATE 23] as a starting point. Little did I realise what problems I would give myself by this deci-sion, as the semi-circular plan of this armchair demands that all rails and legs have different profiles. The back of the chair has a ladder-type arrangement of rails, where the bottom rail is curved following the seat plan and the top rail is straight to fit the back of the person seated, so all the rails between gradually changes from one shape to another. The twelve chairs were eventually finished, but almost put a stop to my career because of the work involved, so from that point I have only used this semi-circular seat for one-off designs.

The ceremonial chair for Milton Manor [PL ATE 58] was designed and made in 1981 to commemorate a visit by Cardinal Basil Hume to the private chapel there. The chapel had been designed in the Strawberry Hill gothic-revival style in the nineteenth century. My brief for the chair design was to reflect this style but at the same time produce a chair that appeared contemporary. I chose the theme of the Windsor chair, thinking that it could be developed into something ceremonial. The top of the back leg divides into the arm and the back. From the top of each back leg small ribs branches off to form a criss-crossed back,

connecting the various elements together. The problem was that I wanted a straight back leg to join the curve of the seat with the curve of the arms; this is like putting a straight element across a cylinder.

I shaped the leg gently so that it still appeared straight but, as the design developed over time, I carved the pieces to fit as in the desk chair of 1985 [PLATE 56–58]. The solution of linking the forms in this way created an interesting three-dimensional effect that became the foundation of many future armchairs.

I was also trying to use simple forms without too much con-structional detail, as I wanted unfussy shapes with the joints doing their job unobtrusively. There is a tradition in furniture design in which it is considered important to express the con-struction using the simplest and strongest joints, as in a machine, but contrary to this I prefer to compromise some of the strength and construction for aesthetic ends. In this chair some of the joints of the curved back are highlighted to emphasise the shape while others remain hidden below the surface. At the time I was making this chair it was too expensive for me to buy interesting woods in sufficient quantity to make a solid wooden chair, so I tended to veneer cheaper varieties to achieve a more interesting result. This chair was veneered in yew and inlaid with ebonised stringing; later on I made three more versions of the design in solid cherry wood that I preferred [1992 pair of desk chairs].

The next commission that marked the development of this shaped back-leg feature came in 1978, with a set of twelve dining chairs and a table, for a customer in Hampstead, London [PLATE 57]. I was trying to produce a design that was not based on the historical references of my first dining chair exhibited at the

56 Armchair, 1985, sycamore with walnut, one of a pair for a hexagonal table. h 90cm.

57 Dining chair, 1978, figured sycamore with walnut inlay. One of twelve made with a dining table, see plate 44. h 90cm.

58 Ceremonial chair for Milton Manor Chapel, 1981, carved cherry wood with leather seat. h 90cm.

59 Armchair, 1988, laminated and carved solid golden rippled satinwood, upholstered in suede. h 100cm.

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The original 1975 chair, based on the Windsor chair [PL ATE 23], had a oblong section, straight, tapered back leg; the ceremo-nial chair of 1981 [PL ATE 58] had a rounded, straight carved back leg; and the desk chairs and the three following designs had tapering carved rhomboid legs. For a new design in 1995 [PLATE 54] , I used various elements from these previous chairs in an experimental way, turning some upside down and changing the function of the back, to break away from the preconceived no-tions of a symmetrical chair.

There have been so many chairs designed over the centuries that it is hard to be fresh and produce something that is not a reflection of someone else’s work, so when designing chairs I am always looking for a new approach that might result in a new creation. A drawing in my sketchbook shows my attempt to resolve an idea for a chair with two fixed sitting positions rather than just one. I move around a lot in a desk chair so thought it might be interesting to design two possible sitting positions, thus combining two chairs in one. Furthering this theme of creating two in one, I extended the upholstered sections of the chair back to become legs [PLATE 54].

The sketch suggested such an interesting design that I wanted to develop it as directly as I could without losing its spontane-ity. I did this by drawing a grid on the sketch to help transfer the proportions to a scale drawing from which a model could be developed. After making a number of models I produced one very close to the original sketch. The next challenge was to make the chair full-size, while retaining the same qualities. As there were no vertical or horizontal elements connecting with right angles in the design, I had to make an armature to resolve the constructional problems. My solution was to make a plinth to the same height of the seat on a baseboard, to which I could fix brackets and scaffolding arms in order to hold the elements of the chair in position [PLATE 64]. First I made plywood parts to create an outline of the chair, which were held in place by the scaffolding, and then one by one I used these plywood shapes as templates to make the final laminations. Gradually all the laminations replaced the plywood shapes, held in position by the scaffolding, and I jointed them together. I then substituted the plinth for the seat structure, and the final elements of the chair were in position. Figure [PL ATE 62] shows the finished chair, with its laminated sycamore forms interweaving to form an asymmetrical design.

At the time I was working on this design, another customer who had commissioned two easy chairs saw my work in progress and asked for another version of the same design. Although this was a one-off commission I felt that I could make similar chairs, as this new customer lived in Hong Kong. I made her a pair of chairs using the same moulds, but instead of the upholstery I used burr redwood veneer [PLATE 65].

60 Armchair, 1992, laminated and carved solid satinwood, upholstered in suede. h 100cm.

61 Armchair, 1988, laminated and carved solid dark red Indian rosewood, upholstered in suede. h 100cm.

opposite

62 Armchair for writing desk, 1995, laminated figured sycamore with black walnut, upholstered in suede. h 90cm.

this page, clockwise

63 Sketch of armchair, see plate 60.

64 Armchair, see plate 60, under construction with scaffolding, 1995.

65 Armchair, 1995, one of a pair, laminated ripple sycamore with seat veneered in burr redwood. One of a pair. h 90cm.

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5 An organic bookcase and the development of naturalistic designs

The design of the bookcase I made in 1982 was based on an image of trees blowing in the Scottish landscape. The vertical supports of the bookcase resemble five tree-trunks, whose upper branches curve over as if blown by the wind, overlapping each other. They glitter with gold leaf, to complement the gilt on the book spines. The sides of the bookcase are veneered with black macassar ebony, and the shelves with white holly.

Until this time my work had been linear in form, so this de-sign was a radical departure. The commission was to produce a bookcase to replace a Georgian glass-fronted cabinet that the customers Kulgin and Colin, who were booksellers, used to hold the contemporary book bindings they had commissioned, as well as other rare books and manuscripts. There were no other references to modern furniture in the room, which was filled with a mixture of seventeenth – and eighteenth-century pieces. I had furnished a bedroom in the same house with lattice-themed work in 1981 [PLATE 38] evolving out of the 1977 backgammon table [PLATE 40], and had initially intended to create a design in a similar style. So it was no doubt a surprise for them to receive a drawing showing a semi-realistic tree-trunk with branches holding shelves like fruits [PLATE 68]. Although the drawing of this kitsch theatrical pastiche was rejected, Kulgin and Colin en-couraged me to do some further work on the design. I think my inspiration for the tree drawings came from two influences. The first was that, as a result of my recent visit to California where I had visited a number of wood craftsmen, I realised that there were many more approaches to design and making than I had previously assumed, and I was excited about developing some new ideas of my own. Second, I had recently entered a competi-tion for which I was asked to design a screen for a meditation area in a chapel, and for this I submitted drawings that were based on a ‘tree-of-life’ theme.

I also felt the need at this time to break away from the tradi-tional themes I had been using in my designs for the past four

66 Bookcase, 1982, mahogany structure veneered in macassar ebony, with gold-leaf mouldings, white holly shelves and back. h 220cm.

Repro: lighten background and sharpen image

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base in both directions to accommodate the different sizes of book, which left only the top element to be resolved. The tree de-sign was still in my mind and, having no intention of resorting to an art-deco ziggurat theme, I persevered with the curved shapes until an outline of a final design for the whole piece materialised. Gradually all the details were resolved in a drawing [PLATE 70]. The use of tapering elements gave the impression of the units growing from the ground, like a tree, with the sides of the units extending and curving over to enclose the sections and overlap-ping each other like tall branches.

The gilding on the vertical tree and branch shapes emphasised the linear movement. The shelves, made of holly, were thin and tapered at the front in order so that they wouldn’t compete with the upward movement of the design. I made a model to resolve the three-dimensional problems of the interweaving top and to work out the most suitable construction of the piece, and soon realised that my original concept of laminating in a mould would be out of the question because of the size of the bookcase. I there-fore decided to experiment with a method of construction based on that used to make Louis XIV commodes with serpentine fronts, in which a base form is made with a material that can then be carved or moulded to the required shape, with the surface then being veneered to provide the finish.

To make each of the vertical elements of the bookcase a tech-nique called kerfing was used, which involves making deep cuts into the plank of wood at centimetre intervals in those areas where a curve is required, so that the plank can then be bent as required to shape the curve. Grooves were then routed across these saw cuts, into which shaped fillets were glued to fix the curve. The plank was then cut to shape and veneered. When all the curved sections were finished, they were assembled into the five separate vertical units with backs and shelves and then fitted on to a base [PL ATE 71] . The trickiest part was entwining all the tops together, which was rather like completing a gigantic, three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle. I had planned to gild the verti-cal elements myself and bought an instruction book, the rabbit-skin glue and gesso, but found the craft a little too difficult, so a friend who worked on picture frames at the National Gallery helped me out [PLATE 72]. The finished piece was delivered in 1982 and has become the piece against which my later designs are measured [PLATE 66].

The bookcase was the first piece of furniture inspired by naturalistic forms since my college days ten years earlier when I made a voluptuous barbecue [PLATE 3]. The piece didn’t herald a new beginning, however; in fact I didn’t return to this naturalistic theme for a couple of years, and by then it had changed to a geo-logical rock theme [PLATE 93]. It wasn’t until 1989, seven years later, that I returned to the sinuous plant forms of the bookcase, with my designs for a series of tables, the first of which was a

top row, left to right

67 Photograph of trees bent by wind.

68 First sketches for bookcase.

69 From the second set of sketches for bookcase.

centre row

70 First working sketch.

71 Bookcase in construction against full-sized drawing.

bottom row

72 Professional framer applying the gold leaf to the mouldings.

73 Glueing parts of basic structure.

74 Final test construction.

years. The idea of using natural imagery in my work came from my interest in the natural beauty of organic and landscape forms. I was also interested in the use of proportion resulting from the golden section and other concepts of beauty, and wanted to approach design from a different angle to that of the Bauhaus concept, in which form follows function. My own feeling has always been that imagery [PLATE 67] should be included as an essential part of the function, as it is in religious architecture, paintings and some furniture. Slightly discouraged by the rejec-tion of the sketch of the tree bookcase, I decided to approach the project from another angle. Instead of drawing an idea and then working out how to make it, I looked at the problem starting from a constructional point of view by drawing shapes that I thought I could make, and at the same time setting the param-eters that would help me define the function of the bookcase, such as where to position the large books or how wide the shelves could be so that I could achieve the visual effect I was aiming for. I decided to use vertical units with varying amounts of space between them, as well as irregular heights of shelves from top to bottom, rather than the traditional shelving arrangement where the larger books are stored at the base of the bookcase, and the smaller ones at the top.

The next set of drawings [PLATE 69] still resembled the first sketches, featuring tree-trunk forms arched over to create tops and with the vertical divisions for the various sized books, but the design was much simpler. In some of these drawings the verti-cals were curved but, as the books needed to be stored vertically with horizontal supports, the ideas had to be simplified further. The first signs of a satisfactory solution emerged when I limited the construction to flat boards that were only curved when not needed to support the books, and were thus more functional than decorative. I thought I would be able to construct these by laminating thin strips together, a method of construction I understood. The lower section of the final design had horizontal and vertical sides of various depths, and they were wider at the

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small table, made in rosewood and with boxwood stringing [PLATE 116].

In 1987 the Great Storm in the south-east of England brought down a large number of trees at the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, and along with other designers I was asked to make a piece of work using timber from the fallen trees, for a commemorative exhibition, After the Storms, held there in 1991. I designed and made a table [PLATE 76], in which I tried to reflect the organic qualities of timber rather than using the square boards that one usually associates with timber from a wood yard. I felt that repli-cating the natural shape of a plank sawn from a tree, stripped of the bark, would seem too naive and rustic, so I used the best parts of the timber to make clean, curved boards. The challenge was how to join these irregularly shaped boards to form a table, with legs and a top, as I wanted to make the elements link together structurally and to retain the natural appearance of the planks. I was working on the design in model form when I had the idea of connecting the elements by using a bronze casting, as I had a friend with a bronze foundry in an adjoining workshop. This offered me the opportunity to add another organic element and colour to the design. The process of making the bronze joints, through the lost-wax process, was a little more difficult than I imagined mainly because the metal shrinks when it is cast. I overcame this by making a template of part of the table one-seventh bigger where the joints were to be, and moulded the wax around this to create the casting model. I had been given

three woods from Kew: cherry, red oak and Osage orange. I chose the last for the exhibition piece [PL ATE 76] ; when newly cut this wood is bright yellow, which creates a dramatic effect seen against the cast bronze. Later I made three more tables using the other woods, with contrasting sycamore, as the connect-ing elements rather than bronze, and the final one in red oak with no contrasting elements. The exhibition piece was sold in auction at Bonham’s and the other pieces that were made later were bought by museums, the Fitzwilliam in Cambridge [PLATE 75], and Shipley Art Gallery in Gateshead [PLATE 77]. The red oak table with a chair and bookcase was sold at Belsay Hall, in Northumberland, by auction in 1999 [PLATE 78].

The two largest commissions using this naturalistic theme of both plant and rock motifs was for a set consisting of a built-in bookcases and fire surround made in 1988 [PL ATE 79] , and a dining-room set with a table, six chairs a sideboard and two cabi-nets that I made over a period of years in the early 1990s (chapter 8). The built-in bookcase and fireplace replaced existing ones, and my task was to design them in a style that reflected the rest of the furniture I had created in the room, including the bookcase [PL ATE 66] and the rock cabinets [PL ATE 95]. The bookcases are made in a combination of ash, walnut, sycamore and olive, the fireplace in marble. Figure [PLATE 80] shows a sofa in the same room, one of two I made in 1988; this one is in hornbeam to reflect the book table behind and a desk table in another part of the room [PLATE 57].

76 Table, 1989, Osage orange wood from the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, top and legs connected with bronze castings. h 90cm.

77 Table, 1989, cherry wood from the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, top and legs connected with figured sycamore. h 90cm. Bought for the Shipley Art Gallery, Gateshead.

75 Table, 1989, Osage orange wood from the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, top and legs connected with figured sycamore. h 90cm. Donated to the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.

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78 Bookcase, table and chair, 1989, red oak from the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew. h 200cm.

79 Fire surround and built-in bookcases, 1988; fireplace of marble; bookcases in ash, walnut, sycamore and olive.

80 Interior with built-in bookcases and sofa, 1988; bookcases in sycamore, ash and olive; sofa frame in holly.

Repro: lighten and brighten to match image below

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chair design combines ideas I had developed in the chair for the RCA show in 1975 [PLATE 26] with the organic features of the bookcase of 1982 [PLATE 66]. The table is constructed of solid sycamore with walnut inlay in the form of a trestle, with two sets of legs supporting the top table-top, with the curved shape of the top emphasised by inlaid lines.

Other work that I made for Great Dixter included three free-standing room lamps, two tables, two stools, a writing desk, and two chairs, all of which are developed around a similar organic theme. I remember the two room lights [PLATE 84] offered me the greatest challenge, as I had to include enough lighting to illuminate a whole room; consequently they became the most free designs as their sole function of emitting light enabled me to experiment with their form. By using Japanese paper stretched over metal frames for shades, together with a tall, curved wood

83 Dining table and ten chairs for Great Dixter, 1993, sycamore with walnut inlay. Table l 260cm.

Repro: neutralise background tones

G R E AT D I X T E R C O M M I S S I O N S

Over the course of the following years most of my designs includ-ed elements of naturalistic imagery, and the pieces I produced for Christopher Lloyd exemplify this period of my work. His house, Great Dixter in East Sussex, combines a fifteenth-century Great Hall, a sixteenth-century Yeoman’s Hall, and a further section, including accommodation by Edwin Lutyens, built in 1912. As such it was quite a challenging environment for which to design work. My first commission, in 1985, was to create an easy chair to be placed next to the great fireplace in the Solar room, in the medieval part of the house [PLATE 81]. I made a large seat with an oak framework, upholstered using traditional methods including springs and horsehair, and covered with silk. Encour-aged by Christopher and his friends Kulgin and Colin, the next designs I created for this room reflected my naturalistic interests and were more experimental than the easy chair.

The book table I made in 1994 [PL ATE 82] with five curved legs in sycamore and rosewood rails that crossed each other to form a structure that is more visual than functional, as there was no need to leave space for chairs as in a traditional table. In my designs for this and the other commissions for Great Dixter, I was trying to reflect the customer’s passion for plants and my interest in organic design rather than the Tudor interior with its oak beams.

The largest commission for Great Dixter was for a dining table and ten chairs [PL ATE 83] , a design that was a development of the organic-themed dining-room pieces I made in 1991 (see Chapter 8) with which Christopher was familiar. The brief was to replace an oak table in the private part of the house that would be just large enough to accommodate ten chairs and the table. The

81 Easy chair for Great Dixter, Kent, 1985, oak surround with ebony inlay, upholstered in silk. h 80cm.

82 Book table for Great Dixter, 1994, figured sycamore with rosewood rails. w 1200cm.

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84 Room light for Great Dixter, 1996, sycamore and rosewood legs with Japanese paper stretched over wire frames. h 220cm.

85 Sideboard, 1994, Rio rosewood with sycamore inlay and interior. Part of a dining suite, plate 86. w 120cm.

86 Chair and table, 1994, sycamore with walnut inlay. Part of a dining suite including twelve chairs, table and sideboard.

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structure, I was able to create an object that hid the functional elements and retained my style of work.

After the 1990s this naturalistic style pervaded most of my work in some way, as can be seen in the dining suite I was com-missioned to make in 1992 (Chapter 8) and again as late as 2010. However, an equally strong ongoing theme originates from my earlier lattice style.

In 1994, a customer approached me to create a design for a dining suite that would be used occasionally for formal diplomatic meals. I decided to adapt the RCA chair of 1975, but to give the classic design an organic flourish with curving rails and inlay [PLATE 86].

The table and chairs were made in figured sycamore with black walnut inlay. The sideboard was a development of one I created in 1992 [PL ATE 125] , with drawers in the centre and cupboards on either side, made in Rio rosewood with sycamore interior and inlay [PLATE 85]. Later I made two armchairs and an extension to the table ends.

In 2010 I was asked to create another dining suite for this customer; by this stage I thought I had exhausted the possibili-ties of the original 1975 chair theme but, by combining it with [PLATE 101], I developed a new design with pierced solid wood rather than using separate rails [PLATE 87]. The round table is constructed in figured ash with black walnut edges, while the chair back reverses the combination of these woods [PLATE 88].

87 Dining chair, 2010, American black walnut with figured ash edges. Part of a dining suite including round table and eight chairs. h 90cm.

88 Table and chairs, 2010, figured ash with American black walnut edges. Table d 150cm.

89 Dining table and chair, 1994, sycamore with walnut inlay, see plate 86.

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6 Rock cabinets

During the 1960s my designs had evolved out of utopian dreams of a future that offered space exploration and new forms of architecture; in the 1970s, out of necessity, I looked back to the more secure traditions of woodcraft and earlier furniture design. In the 1980s I started looking for new sources of inspiration. The world of architecture and furniture design was going through a postmodernist period, with architects such as Robert Venturi creating art deco-inspired buildings, and the Memphis Group of designers led by Ettore Sottsass producing colourful art deco-influenced furniture. I felt that I had exhausted this approach with my college work, and looked to the work of landscape artists whom I knew personally for inspiration.

Christopher Drury, with whom I had shared a house on Rom-ney Marsh between 1972 and 1973, was now making shelters and baskets from found materials on his walks; Mary Nelson, who had also shared the house with us, was in Australia painting and making sculptures inspired by aboriginal mystical animals; and Hamish Fulton, who had been at school with me, was walking in the landscape and recording the experience in photographs and descriptive captions. In 1982, influenced by the artists I met during my trip to America, I used natural imagery as a theme for my bookcase in Scotland (Chapter 5). Two years later, I was asked to make two small cabinets to be placed in the same room as the bookcase, so I felt I should follow a similar theme [PLATE 92/93]. My visit to America had led me to look continually for new ways to use wood in my work. I had stayed in a log cabin near Mendocino in northern California, and later studied a book that showed examples of ‘handmade houses’ in the forests of that area. I also examined the work of American furniture craftsmen such as Wendell Castle and Garry Knox Bennett closely, and was struck by the sculptural way they worked directly with the materials using only sketches as a guide, compared with my method of producing technical drawings before I started a piece of work. I had believed up to that point that fine craft furniture

90 Bedroom interior with chest of drawers and chair, 1989.

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adjustments in form and detail to be resolved while the final full-size work was in progress. I chose to continue with themes based on natural elements, as I had with the bookcase, but related to the geological strata within rocks rather than wind and trees in the Scottish landscape. I decided to treat the form of the boulder as a shell as I felt it had a volume rather than structure. This idea developed as I took preliminary photographs of a few boulders and rock faces and sketched some ideas while trying to organise my thoughts. I found that the rocks and boulders had qualities of form, texture and colour that could be translated into the basic ingredients of a solid presence for a cabinet made in wood [PLATE 91].

The idea was to create a shell form in a base wood, then veneer the surface with various colours to enhance the form and allude to the rock concept. This would give me the opportunity to work directly with the materials and adjust the design on the finished work. I went into the workshop without a technical drawing, just a model and a sketch [PL ATE 94] , knowing the rough overall sizes of the final piece, and started assembling a structure in sycamore and plywood. After a lot of effort I eventually created a functional chest that I veneered in a basic cheap wood to make a base that established a smooth ground on the carcase surface. I drew directly on to the wood that was to be used, to work out an idea for the final veneering, then laid out a wide selection of veneers on the floor to work out the final design, choosing the woods as though they were paints on a palette.

94 Early model of rock cabinet in wood, one-fifth scale.

95 Two views of Cabinet in rock form to house a television, 1985, front veneered in rippled ash, with olive, amboina and burr walnut top and sides. w 150cm.

Repro: neutralise background tones x 2

was made by trained people who had spent years learning crafts that had developed over centuries, so seeing these American makers building furniture with chain-saws and band-saws was a shock and a revelation. Wendell Castle was using stack-laminated wood and carving it with mechanical equipment, and Garry Knox Bennett’s Mexican-inspired work seemed to be made with a band-saw. In England, Richard La Trobe-Bateman was trying to escape the strait jacket of fine-craft methods by using engineering construction techniques, employing equipment and tools such as tension wires, screws and bolts, and Fred Baier, also turning his back on traditional approaches to making furniture, was using pattern-making methods to make three-dimensional coloured sculptural forms.

Seeing all these approaches to design helped me to be more confident and experimental with my own work. Until now I had always planned the designs carefully using drawings and mod-els, and only left the surface to experiment with; in the example of the bookcase, where I based the design on a theme of wind and trees, I had full-sized drawings. I now wanted to make cabinets that were less planned and to dispense with technical drawings and models before I started the construction. I would still de-velop ideas through sketches and model-making, but would leave

91 One of my photographs of rocks that were the inspiration for cabinets.

92 First rock-inspired cabinet, 1984, carcass made of mixed materials, veneered with macassar ebony, ash and walnut. h 70cm.

93 Cabinet, 1984, carcass made of mixed materials, veneered with macassar ebony, ash and walnut, with gold-leaf flecks on the top. h 70cm.

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97 Two Sketches for chest of drawers.

98 Chest of drawers in base woods before veneering.

99 Detail of chest of drawers, with drawers open.

This way of working was new to me and allowed me to work more as a sculptor than a designer, able to react and adjust to the materials while working with them. I found that by using rock formations as the shell, many different functions could be resolved for different cabinets, and the method was so interesting that I used it to make these rock-type cabinets for many years. I did rethink the very basic starting point because of time and cost, and approached the making with a few more plans worked out on the model before I started construction, and have gradually changed the way of making and the materials used, but the concept has remained.

In 1985 I designed a cabinet that was intended to house a televi-sion, and its shape evolved around that function [PLATE 95]. The back section is lower and darker, to hide the depth, and the front is wider than the back and gets wider towards the top of the piece, so that the final form is a long, low curving shape. The front is veneered in rippled ash with the grain positioned so that its darker area is close to the bottom-right corner, which is veneered in a darker wood. At this time the surface decoration was as important to me as the form, so I used a combination of decorative woods in these first cabinets,such as macassar ebony, amboina, olive, figured ash and burr walnut. I found it exciting to visit the veneer wholesaler and look for small quantities of exotic grained woods that could be used together, like a painter choosing different paint colours, rather than buying just one veneer for each project.

For a hall sideboard that was a commission from a customer in Kentish Town, London [PLATE 96], I used macassar ebony with lines of silver inlaid, adapting the rock theme into a flat shape. I exploited this surface idea on a number of pieces but soon tired of using it merely as decoration. I have always been more interested in designs that are integral to the function of a piece rather than mere surface decoration. I was therefore fortunate to

96 Two views of Hall sideboard, 1985, veneered as rock strata in macassar ebony with silver inlay. h 90cm.

102 A pair of cabinets, 2005, one to store a television, the other for glasses, sawn knotty oak with limed ash. h 80cm.

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Repro: cut out but hold very pale vignetted shadows

under desk and chair

Awaiting hi res

be commissioned by Kulgin and Colin to design and make a chest of drawers that enabled me to produce a piece using this design concept.

The chest of drawers [PLATE 90], which dates from 1989, is the culmination of this series of cabinets in which I used veneers to reflect the rock theme. My objective was to evoke the notion of a rock but to reveal little from the appearance about the piece’s practical function. The chest is divided into three separable units that meet at various angles, heightening the abstract nature of the object and hiding the function. All the units are broken up into strata with seams at different angles and made in various colours of wood, accentuating the random nature of the form. The top is flat and horizontal to simulate the effect when a rock is split, and has been polished to highlight the contrast in colours. The chest’s function is only suggested by the four horizontal cut lines that show where the drawers are. If it were not in a bedroom, I believe its function would be even less apparent. The drawers can be opened by handles that correspond in colour to the strata from which they protrude at various angles [PLATE 99]. Although its appearance seems unrelated to its practical function, the piece performs as well as any other chest of drawers.

To develop this piece I followed the same process as I do with

most commissions, using sketches to capture a concept quickly, then moving on to three-dimensional models to envisage the form, veneering the construction in base wood and drawing the design with chalk, and finally choosing the woods from a selec-tion I had strewn all over the floor [PLATE 98].

In 1994 I designed and made a desk and chair for the same customer in Kentish Town, which was of laminated Mexican rosewood with a small amount of satinwood inlay [PLATE 96]. It was loosely based on the desk inspired by a Japanese screen (Chapter13), but this time with rock-like pedestals containing drawers.

Between 1997 and 1998 I made a number of pieces in solid sawn bog oak on a naturalistic theme, and was able to develop my interest in texture by combining it with solid sycamore [PLATE 101] . It wasn’t until 2003, however, that I made seminal piece, which consisted of three parts, completely dominated by the rock concept [PLATE 151]. This time I used solid sawn bog oak and limed oak laminated with a composite, factory-made board, to ensure that the solid wood would remain stable, thus leaving me to concentrate on the texture and shape of the piece rather than the surface decoration. Continuing this theme I created another design combining brown pippy oak with limed ash [PLATE 102].

100 Writing desk and armchair, 1994, laminated Mexican rosewood with satinwood inlay. w 160cm.

101 Two views of writing desk and armchair, 1998, sawn bog oak and figured sycamore. One pillar of the desk contains drawers, the other a cupboard; both are on a turntable so that they can be moved to different positions. w 140cm.

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7 Computer assisted design

In 1997, I won a competition to design a banqueting table cel-ebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the Contemporary Applied Arts gallery (CA A) in London, and this was the first of a series of pieces that were either designed on a computer or were in-fluenced by my recent work using it. In 1996 I was tempted to try designing with the aid of a computer programme, as I’d seen many images showing futuristic designs of architecture and cars in magazines that had been originated from computer designs. They struck me as being very exciting, as they were such accurate representations of the finished product.

I had always struggled to produce realistic images of my designs to show customers, and used watercolour and coloured

103 Banqueting table for the fiftieth anniversary of the Contemporary Applied Arts Gallery, London, 1998, laminated birch veneered with maple and stained. l 600cm.

Repro: sharpen and strengthen colour

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to use bolts instead of wooden fixings. With these materials and methods of construction in mind I set about developing my concepts into a practical design.

The design evolved around the size of a sheet of plywood that is 120 x 244 cm, so I quickly decided that the table-top should be formed from 120 x 120 cm sections. I was keen to use the large square legs that featured in my early experiments when devis-ing the design, as I found they could be manipulated at different angles and positions. Another interesting aspect of the computer programme was that different design elements could be collided together and, with a few clicks, the component parts separated, showing all the angles created. This discovery became an essen-tial part of the design, as it was possible to work out the positions of all the elements in relation to each other, and then print out drawings that were accurate to within a millimetre. The final design eventually evolved out of the need for structural stability, and the functional requirements of a table; then all that had to be done was to resolve the construction using the bolting method that I’d envisaged.

After many hours and nights of eye strain, I produced three designs on the same theme that I was able to present from a number of points of view, all in perspective and lit from different angles [PLATE 104–106]. The designs were very different from what I’d have produced using a sketchbook; they were simple in terms of the forms but if I’d drawn them they would have been dismissed because I wouldn’t have been able to envisage the geometry of construction. To my surprise the table won the competition, and so I now had to make the piece. This was as much of a challenge as the design. All went to plan except that I’d designed the table without really understanding how large it was; the legs needed to be inserted from underneath the table top, which would have been easy on a small table, by turning it upside down, fitting the legs and then turning it the right way up, but a quite impossible task with a six-metre table. We resolved this by using trestles to support the top and then feeding the legs in from underneath, an operation that took a couple of hours to complete [PLATE 107].

Creating this table altered my approach to designing; having worked directly on the computer without using a sketchbook or making models, I’d only used a pencil in order to jot down num-bers. The final design was presented with computer print-outs and could even have been sent electronically to the judges, with no need for paper at any stage.

I had always designed through making sketches followed by testing the ideas through model-making, often developing the idea to a final design with these models. By using the CAD programme, it became possible to develop ideas, turn them around to see them from all angles and even put them into an imaginary environment. This method made it easy to progress

ideas on to a three-dimensional stage without commitment. It was also very convenient for the public-art commissions that I had begun to receive, as the designs had to be demonstrated to committees and changes made quickly. The programme also produced working drawings as well as presentations, so it was easy to communicate the constructional details and have parts made in other workshops.

The public commissions that followed gave me much more practice with the computer. These jobs were also very large, and I had not previously tackled anything much bigger than a cupboard, so having these computer skills helped me a lot. I was able to make good presentations and produce accurate working drawings. Before this I would have found it very difficult to conceive these three-dimensional ideas.

RECEPTION DESK, QUEEN ELIZ ABETH HOSPITAL, BIR MINGHAMIn 1998 I was commissioned to design a reception desk for the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham [PLATE 108]. The brief for this included lighting, storage, access, signage, etc., and the desk was to be located in a part of the building where two sup-porting pillars dominated the space. The design I resolved con-sists of a series of circular rings broken up by openings for large trolleys and incorporated two columns, which were expanded to include storage cupboards. The design features a ring at the top constructed in dark blue plywood to hold the lighting. The desk comprises a series of rings on various levels. The top one of these, in laminated cherry wood, consists of a storage section and a surface for customers to write on. An inner ring is the work-ing surface for the receptionist, made in cherry wood. The outer

108 Reception desk for the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham, 1998, laminated birch veneered with ash and cherry wood and painted surfaces. d 400cm.

pencils to produce sketches, so the idea of being able to produce clear images of my designs was appealing. The computer draw-ings looked bright and fresh, with the advantage that they could also be viewed and revolved like models onscreen. Computer presentations of designs appeared to give the impression of a real image, with high-quality visuals in terms of colour, textures and lighting. Even at that time it was envisaged that in the fu-ture a design for an object could be fed into a machine and the finished piece could be made without any human intervention. The temptation to give the computer a try was difficult to resist, so I bought a computer, installed a computer-aided design (CAD) programme, purchased a doorstop-sized manual, and was ready to go. The learning curve was so great that I had to hire some help to get me started, and even then I was only capable of drawing a cube. I soon realised that it was going to take a long time to design a new piece of furniture by this method.

Fortunately the CAA competition, which carried a small prize, was announced at this point. Although I had never had any luck with previous competitions, I decided to use it as a learning experience, and teach myself to use the new computer. It gave me a brief and a deadline, which I always find helpful when I’m learning something new. As an extra challenge I resolved to develop a design by means of the computer programme without making any sketches or models. This meant that I would produce only computer presentations, which was a gamble as other com-petitors would present models of their designs. For me this was a completely new way of designing.

Before this project I had a wide range of options when consid-ering the details of a design, from the choice of materials to the many shapes that I could derive from the furniture crafts I knew, which included turning, laminating and carving. In this new venture I was learning a new skill on a computer and so had to restrict my choice of materials and techniques. I realised early on that my lack of technical skills on the computer meant I couldn’t use anything more complex than the basic box shapes that I was learning to design with, so I had to choose materials and methods of construction that would be suitable to make these basic shapes. One option was to use medium-density fibreboard, which is brown with a smooth surface, and made of pulped wood that has been glued together. The edges are soft so, if I used it for the table-top, I would have to glue solid wood on to the edges, and veneer the surfaces to create the clean surfaces that I wanted. So I chose birch plywood instead, as the boards came in fixed sizes, it had more strength, and the edges were hard and showed the striped layers of the plywood, which I liked. Some of the surfaces were to be in a white wood and others painted in different colours, so maple became the wood of choice because it is hard, a similar colour to the birch edges and can take colour. As plywood is not suitable to joint in any traditional way, I decided

104 First computer rendering of the design for the banqueting table.

105 Computer rendering of the design for the banqueting table.

106 Developed computer rendering of the banqueting table.

107 Completed banqueting table

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hide computers and the staff’s work surfaces, and the lowest ones for wheelchair users. As with my other computer-originated furniture, both desks were constructed using man-made boards, either veneered or painted. The glass for both desks was to be mainly blue, as Jane found this was the simplest colour to work with, so I contrasted this by painting the frame around the glass a shade of red and using cherry wood for the worktops, which is also reddish, with grey paint as a neutral background for the rest of the desk.

R E C E P T I O N D E S K , T H E S TA B L E S, W AV E N D O NThe next year, 2001, the architects Sansome Hall approached me to design a reception desk and bar for the Stables, Johnny Dankworth and Cleo Laine’s music venue in the grounds of their house, in Wavendon, a village near Milton Keynes. The architects had designed the foyer with a glass-roofed, which connected an existing building with the new theatre and was to contain the reception desk and bar. I was given a curved plan of the desk

opposite

109 Reception desk for Milton Keynes Gallery, 1999, laminated birch veneered with beech, ash, pear and coloured surfaces, with a lino worktop.

110 Reception desk for Norwich Castle Museum, 2000, worktop veneered with cherry, with painted structure, glass by Jane McDonald backlit with led lights. w 400cm.

below

111 Information desk for Norwich Castle Museum, 2000, worktop veneered with cherry, with painted structure, glass by Jane McDonald backlit with led lights. Diam. 600cm.

ring is a laminated structure made of paper and plywood and veneered in maple, and acts as a vanity screen for the legs. The bottom ring, covered in blue rubber, is the skirting. Finally there is a ring of carpet surrounding the desk. The vertical elements conceal the electrical wiring and support the signs.

As with the banqueting table the design depended on veneered plywood forms, which were moulded in the case of the round desk, rather than solid wood. I found it easier to design using sheet forms that bolted together with a metal structure than solid wood and traditional joints.

R E C E P T I O N D E S K , M I LT O N K EY N E S G A L L E RYIn 1999, the Milton Keynes Development Corporation built a new theatre and art gallery, designed by Andrzej Blonski, and commissioned a collection of artworks for the complex. I was approached to create the reception desk for the gallery because of my reputation as a designer and the fact that I lived locally [PL ATE 109] . The commission was interesting as it entailed working within the architect’s concept, and the project coincided with my experimentation with asymmetric forms. I designed the desk to cut into the spaces and layers of the reception area walls, which were a mixture of glass, concrete and a blue-painted cur-tain wall. The design consists of forms in different colours and woods, with some storage units cutting through the glass wall at the back of the space, and the main desk protruding through the blue curtain wall. From the outside of the building you look through a window display into a meeting room, through the glass wall with cupboards penetrating it, to the desk units and on into the gallery framed by a blue wall. The main structure is made of laminated birch plywood with beech, ash, pear and coloured veneers, and a lino worktop. Access to the desk is provided by a counter-weighted flap. The brief specified that the desk should be manned by two receptionists, that it could be used and worked at by the disabled and wheelchair users, and that there should be storage above and below, together with separate display units for selling magazines and postcards.

R E C E P T I O N D E S K A N D I N F O R M AT I O N D E S K , N O RW I C H C A S T L E M U S E U MIn 2000 I won a commission to design a reception desk [PLATE 110] and an information desk [PL ATE 111] for Norwich Castle Museum. The Norman keep of the castle had been a prison in the earlier part of the twentieth century and then converted into a museum, and was being restored to its 1960s condition. The commission stipulated incorporating work by the glass artist Jane McDonald into the two desks.

The reception desk, which had to accommodate up to three re-ceptionists, was to be designed to fit into a corner at the entrance to the castle, and had to include units to contain cupboards and a

safe. The information desk was to be an enclosed space, manned by four people. The brief required the information desk to be split into small units that could connect together, and fitted with cast-ers so that they could be moved and stored in another location when the space was needed for other functions, and linked to the computer, alarm and lighting system via points in the floor. As with my design for the Queen Elizabeth Hospital desk, I worked on a circular theme for the information desk, as it seemed the most logical shape, and it was much easier in computer design-ing to keep to simple geometric forms. As the desk had to be made in units that could be moved when necessary, the best solution seemed to be to give each unit a different function, with high-fronted ones for customers to stand behind, lower ones to

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112 Reception desk and bar, the Stables Theatre, Wavendon, near Milton Keynes, laminated birch veneered with bog oak, glasswork by Jane McDonald.

113 Model for the reception desk, the Stables, plate 112.

position with strict functional requirements, one of which was to include a metal ring above the desk to hold TV monitors, lights and other equipment.

My attempts to develop the project using the computer failed. Whether this was because my ideas were more three-dimensional than usual and I found it too difficult to translate them through the computer I do not know, but I decided to return to my original way of working using drawing and model-making, producing a model of the whole foyer showing where the desk was to be situated. At first I felt rather daunted by the glass roof and the TV monitors and other equipment that would dominate the space, but eventually decided that it might be interesting to form a connection between the desk, the monitors, and the space rather than ignore the context. Having worked with Jane McDon-ald before on the Norwich Castle reception desk, I included glass in my design, thinking it would be an interesting extra feature. In the development of the design in model form, I used curved pieces of card to represent glass shapes, which linked the desk to the roof space [PLATE 113]. The eventual design uses curved shapes of glass on the desk surface, which linked up visually

with pieces that float up towards the glass roof, and serve to disguise the monitors and lights positioned above the desk. The final design for the glass, after discussions with Jane, comprised a series of suspended laminated curved sheets, coloured by Jane, held together and to the roof by frames and stainless-steel wires. The desk features some glass surfaces, with the rest being made from a combination of laminated sheets of birch, veneered in bog oak and held together on a wooden frame [PLATE 112].

This experience had demonstrated the limitations of the computer process, and showed that sketching and model-making were still very useful. I did use the computer on this project to produce working drawings, so that some of the elements could be made in another workshop. I had found that I was as quick if not quicker with pencil and paper, but I was now aware of another approach to design, and had learnt that I had another tool at my disposal, to use in conjunction with pencil and paper.

The pieces illustrated in figures [PL ATE 108–111] were all developed on a computer, with a small amount of work using a sketchbook. They share the distinguishing features of geometric shapes and box forms, and the use of colour.

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8 Dining–room furniture

In 1991 I was commissioned to make a table with six chairs, along with three cabinets, one of which was to serve as a sideboard. They were to be the only pieces in a white room, which has an oak floor and large windows looking out across the Scottish landscape. The table-top is divided into six separated sections made in figured sycamore, each of which is edged with dark brown American black walnut. The gaps between the sections and the central motif are filled with bronze, which is coloured dark brown, and forms a pattern of lines on the table-top. The six chairs positioned at the end of each section of the table are made of sycamore and walnut, with the intended effect being of the table growing from the ground, with the chairs surrounding the top like reeds. The three cabinets are solid and weighty look-ing, emphasising the lightness of the chairs and table, while also continuing the theme of naturalistic organic forms.

This commission was a great opportunity for me, as the only stipulation of the brief was to create a set of dining furniture for this room for six people, which was to replace a fine set of seventeenth-century Derbyshire oak chairs and an unusual octagonal seventeenth-century Italian table. It was the first time I had had the chance to conceive a collection of furniture that would stand alone in a specific space. I had previously designed work that had to relate to other pieces in a furnished interior, resolving the connection by using some related aspect to the existing furniture, such as style or colour, and then treating the design as an individual piece of sculpture that could stand on its own. This time I had the freedom to create a whole new theme.

The first objective was to consider my approach to the whole room, but as it was part of a house that I had by now furnished al-most completely, it was perhaps inevitable that one of the themes I had already developed would be continued. The bookcase of 1982 [PLATE 66] was the first major commission for which I used a design inspired by nature, in this case trees, and I followed it with a series of cabinets inspired by rocks, culminating in the large

114 Dining room, table, six chairs and three cabinets, 1991–3.

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chest of drawers made in 1987 [PLATE 90]. However the piece that I chose as the design source for the dining room table and chairs was a small, sculptural table I made in 1989, whose form resembled a water-lily [PL ATE 116] , and whose only function was supporting a table lamp. The customers, Kulgin and Colin, browsed through my sketchbook when we were discussing the design of this earlier table, to find ideas that might flower into an interesting design. The sketch they picked out was no more than a few random wavy lines [PLATE 115], a doodle that I then worked up, from a model into a table with plant-shaped forms. The resulting piece had entwining legs, each culminating at the table-top in its own horizontal surface, with the various sections joining together to form the top. This feature was to reappear in the design for the dining table, although this didn’t happen at once as I tested many other possibilities first.

I started the project by designing the chairs using this lily theme, as I thought this would be the most difficult aspect of the project, especially as Kulgin and Colin had challenged me to create something that was completely original and not based on any previous designs. My first thoughts were to start with a new approach, hoping for a similar design breakthrough to the one I’d had when working on the bookcase of 1982. I started with rounded forms, which reflected a fashion of the time for seats using moulded forms, as I wanted to break away from the lattice-style designs I had become known for, that began with my chair for the RCA show in 1976. By now I hoped I could escape from this format but, despite making models using wax and small pieces of wood to forward my sketch ideas, all that materialised was something that would only have worked in plastic due to the complexity of the curved shapes [PLATE 117]. To make myself feel I had made some progress a friend cast the wax and wood model in bronze.

Looking for a new way into the project, I modelled a little scale

115 Three sketches for the lily table [plate 116]; the original idea – ‘no more than a few random wavy lines’ – on the left, 1989.

116 Lily table, 1989, sycamore veneered with rosewood on sycamore with box-wood inlay. h 75cm.

121 Two sketches to resolve the design of the chair back.

122 Working out the construction with a one-fifth scale model.

Repro: neutralise background tone

117 First sketches for the dining chair.

118 Developing the chair design with a clay model.

119 Sketch for the dining chair.

120 Dining chairs, 1991, laminated sycamore with American black walnut edges and metal under-frame. h 108cm.

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design was achieved by using a metal under-frame and hidden brackets [PLATE 123].

I always want the furniture I make to last for a long time, so try to persuade customers to have solid wood dining table-tops rather than veneered ones, as these can be damaged very easily, although using solid wood demands much more support. The table I had designed had six, separate leaf-like sections spring-ing from curving legs, and in order to ensure that the top stayed flat, I designed a bronze under-frame that is virtually invisible, rigid enough to hold the wood in place and strong enough to bolt the legs to, otherwise the wood would expand and warp as the temperature and humidity changed. The meeting-point of the sections of the top left gaps in the centre and at the edges of the table-top, so to stop objects falling through I filled the central spaces with coloured bronze panels matching the walnut lipping and forming a decorative pattern.

I now needed to make cabinets that would suit the interior space and whose design would link up with the table and chairs. The work was being created over a number of years, and the in-tention was to make one piece interact with the idea of the next.

123 Three sketches showing the development of the dining table [plate 124].

124 Dining table, 1991, solid and laminated figured sycamore, with American black walnut edges; table-top and legs connected with bronze panels and under-frame. d 150cm.

figure from clay and put it in a seated position in a structure made out of metal, wood and plastic strips. I tried to devise a chair that would hold the clay model in a novel way, using a comparable style to the 1989 table with its entwining legs [PLATE 116]. The structure for the chair had more functions to resolve than the table, so the solution took much longer to resolve. I studied the results of the strips around the model and worked on sketches to develop the idea further, using scale drawings to devise a method of combining the front and back legs [PL ATE 117–118] . After filling most of a sketchbook with drawings, I made scaled sketches that were used to create a one-fifth scale model [PLATE 121–122].

While I was making the model, I considered the construction methods. Forming organic shapes in wood is achieved in only a few ways: by laminating, steambending or carving the form out of solid wood. Steambending depends on using the wood in its green state, soon after it has been cut down and still retains its moisture and resin. I discounted this method as it would have meant learning completely new techniques. Although I wanted this flexible concept in my design I decided that it would take too long to experiment and achieve the required degree of so-phistication. I was only producing six chairs and wanted the freedom to choose tighter, more controlled bends, but carving out of solid wood as in the ceremonial chair [PLATE 58] was not an option as the makers who were helping were not carvers, so laminating seemed the best option. Laminating is a technique for creating bent pieces of wood, where thin strips of wood are glued together, placed in a two-piece mould and clamped in position until the glue hardens.

I haven’t mentioned sophistication before as a concept,

because it is only appropriate used in certain contexts. There is a difference between a piece of furniture for the garden and one for an interior, because outdoor pieces have to cope with the effects of the elements and are therefore constructed in a bolder, more robust fashion. An indoor piece can be made with as much refinement as the user wants, and the design for this commis-sion was required to have a degree of refinement to match the table silver and other tableware. Laminating wood produces the clean, crisp appearance that I wanted, and can be repeated. The process is time-consuming but achieves a uniform result that can be controlled more easily than steaming. All processes have their limitations, and with lamination the main problem is the visible glue lines on the edge of the shape; these are very prominent in a white wood such as sycamore so the design has to accommodate this detail.

I made the final model bearing in mind that I was using lamination as the construction method, and limited the number of bends in the design as each one would need a mould. I also made the decision that the edges of the laminations would be concealed by laminating an edge banding on to the sides. This detail is also time-consuming to achieve, but leaves an attractive defining line around the forms [PLATE 120].

Designs for the table were underway very soon after the de-signs for the chairs were being worked out, so that they would be compatible. Bearing in mind that the table to be replaced had been octagonal, I started to draw designs based on various equally sided shapes, trying different leg arrangements and link-ing them with the segments of the table-top shape. I was trying to achieve a design, inspired by the lily table but with simpler flowing lines to reflect those in the chair. The final flowing

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126 Two views of Cabinet, 1993, two cupboards with doors, panels veneered with holly and walnut inlay, with the interior cupboard in rosewood. h 900cm.

Repro: adjust colour of these two to half way house so they

match

The first cabinet to be dealt with would serve the most practical function, acting as a conventional sideboard and storing the cutlery and glass [PL ATE 125]. As the dining table and chairs were made from sycamore, a very light-coloured wood, with a dark inlay, I started with the idea that the sideboard should have the opposite combination. The solution I chose was a mixture of the Japanese-inspired sideboard [PLATE 52] and desk [PLATE 123], but using the sweeping shapes and lines I had developed on the table-top as a guide to create interlocking planes to form the doors and top, a feature that I continued on the other two cabinets.

These two cabinets were to be used mainly for storage, and as they needed to be thinner I decided to make a decorative feature of the tops; as neither has a usable surface. Still work-ing on the interlocking plane theme for the second cabinet, the doors became the focus of the design [PLATE 127]. The way that car doors work interested me, and a picture of a cabinet made from the side of a car suggested a possible approach. I devised a system where the doors would slide open as in a van, with the mechanism hidden. Although when I began to design this room my intention was to evolve cupboards from a new perspective and not to use the rock theme, I did end up using it, even though

the sliding-doors device could have offered an alternative design scheme.

I used a dark wood, Indian laurel, for the sideboard and this cabinet, so decided that the third piece should be in a light ma-terial, sycamore or something similar. I wasn’t making much progress with my exploratory sketches for the form of this final cabinet, but experimenting in three dimensions with bits of paper and a lump of wood I somehow evolved a cubist-style ap-proach, using layers on a vertical plane. The layers of wood stand considerably higher than the storage area, and give an illusion of several panels of wood assembled against the wall, so it comes as a surprise when one of the front planes is opened to reveal a storage cupboard [PLATE 126].

The different pieces in this set of furniture are all linked visu-ally by the elements of wood colour, texture and simple, curving lines and shapes, even though some of the designs emerged from different concepts. When this furniture was completed I had the feeling that it represented some sort of high point in my career; I had put a great deal of effort into resolving certain aspects of the work and could not see how I could develop my ideas any further in the near future. It took some time before I felt myself able to move forward again.

125 Sideboard, 1992, two cupboards and six fitted drawers, sycamore base and interior with exterior veneered with Indian laurel inlaid with sycamore lines. h 800cm.

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Repro: sharpen x 2

127 Cabinet, 1992, shown closed and open; two cupboards with sliding doors, sycamore base and interior, with exterior veneered with Indian laurel inlaid with sycamore lines. h 900cm.

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9 Steambending and production work

I have always hankered after designing a piece of furniture for mass production. Although designing and making one-off pieces is rewarding and creative, the idea of royalties is very appealing.

The opportunity to try to achieve this goal came when I ap-plied in 1983 to the Crafts Council for the John Ruskin award and was given a small bursary to work on a steambending project to develop a new chair, which allowed me to dedicate some time away from my business in pursuit of this dream.

The first step in fulfilling my ambition of mass-producing furniture was to make suitable equipment for steambending, as it wasn’t something you could buy off the shelf. I made some very amateur-looking tools, based on pictures in an American woodworking magazine and on information gleaned from trad-ing information brochures produced by the Council for Small Industries in Rural Areas (CoSIRA), as well as a steam box made out of plywood. It was fitted with copper pipes to distribute the steam, and the pipes were connected to a Burco tea urn that boiled the water. The wood to be bent was placed in the box and immersed in the steam for varying lengths of time depending on its thickness. It was then taken out and immediately put in a jig so that its heat was retained, with a strap and long handle that was then pulled by a number of people around a former (the piece of the jig that is the shape you want the final steamed piece of wood to be). The jig and the bending equipment were all made in plywood, held together with steel bolts, and looked very rustic [PLATE 129–130], but they did the job and produced bent bits of wood that were then put in a holding jig and placed in a drying cupboard to retain their shape. Wood is made up of fibres about 50mm long depending on the variety, and the objective of steaming is to loosen the adhesive that holds them together so that, when the wood is bent, the fibres slide against each other rather than break, and when cooled are fixed in the new position.

I found that this process had limitations: I was only able to make simple curved pieces, and there was a lot of breakage due

128 Detail of steam bended dining chair, 1987, laminated ash with brown oak. Part of a set of six, including two armchairs, and an extending round table. h 90cm.

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I felt that I had achieved a degree of success by making a piece of functioning furniture that was designed around a process, rather than a one-off piece that evolved round visual themes, but after trying to sell the design without success decided to conclude my attempts at making mass-produced furniture.

In 1984 a customer who was employing Mary Fox Linton, an interior designer, to work on his offices, asked me to design the chairs. Interior designers are generally reluctant to use furniture designers in their projects, partly because of the length of time a

132 Archive photograph of dining table and chairs, 1983, chestnut and enamelled steel structure with a laminated table-top. l 170 cm.

Repro: hold background dot at top x 2

to the variability of wood. It didn’t take long for me to realise why Ercol chairs had only one steambent component. Looking back, I seem to have made reams of sketches with lovely coloured shapes in the form of chairs [PLATE 131] that all looked feasible on paper, but the designs that I developed from these had an unstable structure. I think that I relied too much on guesswork, rather than experimenting directly with the bent pieces of wood I was producing, and should have ignored the visual aspect and concentrated on the structure.

As the money ran out and no workable design had emerged, I began to lose heart, but was nevertheless determined to produce a functioning piece of furniture to conclude the project. Taking stock of what I had achieved, I examined my options. Comparing my chairs with those produced by Michael Thonet and Ercol, I realised that the basic flaw in my designs was that they didn’t have a stable core. In both Thonet and Ercol pieces the seat was a strong and stable element to which the flexible steambent pieces were attached. In my designs the seat floated on the top of the bent pieces, resulting in a wobbly chair. I had thought that if there was a strong structure at the heart of the design it would be possible to bolt on components to make almost any form. Reassessing all my sketches for steambending showed me that some of the constructional lines were ideally suited to be made with steel, so I made models using wire to develop a design in which there was a central steel structure on to which wooden components could be bolted. I should have used bentwood components for the bent back parts but by this time had lost my enthusiasm and used machine-made flat pieces of wood [PLATE 132]. The final chair and table were constructed from separate pre-made pieces. I made the wood parts while a business friend who specialised in steel constructions made the metal structures.

129 Equipment for steambending showing arm and strap used to pull wood around jig.

130 Equipment for steambending showing water boiler and steamer box.

131 Three Sketches for chair with steambent components.

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It is always the promotional aspect that I shy away from when it comes to marketing my furniture, although once in an act of bravado I shared a stand with a friend at a large furniture show at Olympia, London, in 1986. I made some simple, colourful furniture that seemed suitable but then found that the prices I would have to charge were not competitive enough for it to be mass-produced, so it could only be marketed as one-offs, which was not at all my intention. I even advertised them in a new magazine, Idealogue, in 1987 [PLATE 135], which aimed to revo-lutionise the crafts industry by setting up a mail-order business, thus bypassing the galleries and their commission. However, this scheme didn’t work out, and so I continued to design and make one-off furniture.

My experiments with mass-production did, however, reap some rewards and the experience was useful. Some of the con-cepts were later used in the work I designed on the computer, and the customer who had ordered the simple dining furniture continued to commission work for many years.

134 Dining chair, 1987, laminated ash with brown oak. Part of a set of six, including two armchairs, and an extending round table. h 90cm.

commission is likely to take and partly because there is often a difference of taste or interpretation. Fortunately Mary liked my work, and even chose one of my earlier chairs [PLATE 26] as a favourite piece for a magazine article. I was given one week to resolve a design [PLATE 133]; perversely I managed to create a mass-produced item through this commission rather than by my own efforts, as fifty chairs were required. I managed to perfect a way of steambending the legs without producing too many failures, which is one of the major problems with this production technique. The finished chair worked well, but was a little too expensive to compete with other mass-produced chairs in the marketplace.

I still used steambending to make bentwood components, but gradually developed laminating techniques, which are more reliable and easier to control for one-off commissions. There are frequently gaps between one-off commissions and it is during these periods that I look for new directions. In 1987 a commission came along to produce some dining furniture on a very tight budget [PLATE 134], and this seemed like a great opportunity to develop a design that could be manufactured as a product that could be reproduced in large numbers, using simple elements that could be produced by machine and assembled easily. The solution used laminated legs and seemed fine, but I didn’t really have the energy to promote the design, and as I had some one-off commissions lined up, didn’t pursue this option any further.

133 Armchair, 1984, steambent sycamore with cloth upholstery. Part of a commission for the offices of Skybridge, London, which included boardroom tables, sideboards and twenty chairs. h 92cm.

Repro: lighten blue shadows at foot but retain

soft vignetted shadow

135 Bookcase, table, 1986, stained sycamore a batch-production experiment for the mail-order catalogue, Idealogue. h 180cm.

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10 A pied–à–terre in Edinburgh

In 2001 I was offered the exciting opportunity to furnish a pied-à-terre in Edinburgh. I remember the day I went to have a look at it before the refurbishment began. The flat was on the top floor of a seventeenth-century building. It was converted in the 1960s and was a warren of little rooms, with three bedrooms and dark pas-sages. It had rooms sharing one window and everything seemed to be dark brown. However it had spectacular views over Princes Street and across to the Firth of Forth in the distance. It was very hard to tell what the space would look like after the architect had worked on it, but I couldn’t wait to start work on the project. The architect’s plans soon arrived, and involved reducing the previ-ous conglomeration of rooms to one bedroom, a bathroom and a large space for cooking, eating and living in. The plan was to have wooden floors, white walls and concealed lighting throughout. It was a challenge to tackle a project like this and reflect a similar sense of unity in my work.

Previously my bigger projects had been to design some recep-tion desks within a tight framework set out by an architect. This was on a different scale: the flat had functional spaces within connecting rooms, with the architect supplying only the spaces. On my second visit the flat was a building site with no floor or ceiling, and I had to envisage the space and imagine where the first project, the kitchen, was to be situated. An interior designer might have tackled the project by considering the space as a whole and producing a concept for the entire interior, with all the furniture linking together in a co-ordinated style, but I prefer to be much looser in my thinking as I like to work on each piece of furniture as an individual composition, linking each item to the space and the other pieces and taking into account my developing ideas. The idea of imposing one concept throughout the interior seemed to fix the way of designing too tightly; as a gardener I find the progressive growth and decay of plants much more satisfying than, say, the static, controlled nature of a Zen gravel garden. My thoughts change from day to day, so I feel it’s

136 Chest with drawers and cupboards, 2001, combination of elm, bog oak, figured ash, and yew woods. h 150cm.

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of bog oak to relate to the kitchen equipment, and limed white ash to tie in with the wall colours. All that I had to do now was to produce a design.

D E S I G N I N G T H E K I T C H E NWith the public commissions, the briefs demanded some striking elements to catch the eye, but what was required here was to evolve a design that would form part of the space and blend into it. I came to the conclusion that one of the first objectives was to link the design to the alcoves and windows, so that the built-in furniture was integrated with the space. The kitchen had to fit within a large alcove, with a window to one side. Having worked on a few kitchens, I knew that the challenge is always how to deal with the corners and the seemingly unusable space in them. Cor-ners are usually filled with contraptions in order to make use of the space, but I always prefer to resolve a kitchen design without these corner units. In the current case the answer seemed to be to make three separate pieces: a long fitted unit across the alcove to hold all the kitchen equipment, and two side cupboards that would be less formal, to hold the china or act as a store cupboard [PLATE 138]. There would be a comfortable gap between each, to break up the forms and create a place in which to stand.

137 A pair of chests, 1997, stack of small oak drawers in a carcass made of sawn bog oak cut through with sycamore. h 90cm.

138 Cupboard with two doors and six drawers, 2000, ash carcass with sawn bog oak front and English oak top. w 150cm.

better not to make too many firm decisions for the future. How-ever, whatever was going through my mind about the project in general, first I had to focus on the designs for the kitchen.

The architect and the customers decided to have the dining room and kitchen in one space, and the brief was to produce a kitchen in which the furniture didn’t just look utilitarian, with a sink, oven and fridge on display. I was given a list of fittings that were to be housed, and the design ideas were left to me, although the architect did send me a picture of a minimalist kitchen by John Pawson that included a lot of concrete and stainless steel, which gave me an insight into the architect’s views. Designers, and especially architects, hate their work to be compromised by the work of other artists, so diplomacy was called for.

Around this time I was adopting two particular themes in my designs: a deconstructivist style, creating fragmented forms and shapes that I designed on the computer, as in the desk I made for the Milton Keynes Gallery in 1999 [PLATE 109], and an organic naturalism, using flowing forms and textures developed through drawings and model-making, as in the room lights I designed for Christopher Lloyd at Great Dixter [PL ATE 84]. To create ideas that were sympathetic to the architect’s way of thinking, I worked with simple forms that were not too organic and flowing, instead using the texture and colour qualities of solid wood. I used the computer to generate the design, holding back the bright colours that generally featured in this aspect of my work.

The kitchen was the first project to be tackled, as the position-ing of the appliances had to be worked out at the same time as the plumbing and wiring was being fitted. The challenge was how to make the various pieces of kitchen equipment – oven, hob, fridge, freezer and sink – disappear so that the kitchen units looked like a piece of furniture rather than a built-in kitchen. Materials were the first consideration. In my earlier work I often used exotic woods such as rosewood and ebony, usually in veneer form, but I had recently become aware of the environmental impact of jungle deforestation and decided I should find an alternative. This wasn’t a simple issue, as most of the European woods blend and age to a similar colour, and I prefer to use con-trasting colours. Fortunately I had recently discovered bog oak, which is completely black, and had used it in conjunction with white sycamore for a couple of small projects. I decided that bog oak would be the defining wood in the design, with the idea that this black wood could somehow be used to minimise the visual impact of the black oven.

Most of the wood I buy to make my furniture is only a year or two old and is sold dry and rough-sawn in fixed sizes from a timber merchant, before I convert it into smooth sections for the furniture. The bog oak that I bought was in a different state, rather damp and full of insect holes and of various shapes and sizes. I was lucky to have been offered this wood as it is quite rare

and in the early stages of fossilisation before it becomes coal; this log had been under the ground in a Norfolk field for around 5,000 years till a plough had unearthed it, although it is usually found where peat is being dug.

In 1997, I used bog oak for the first time to make a pair of display cupboards and found that, by leaving the wood rough-sawn [PL ATE 137] , it retained a strong sense of its history in its almost fossil-like texture and deep, coal-black colour. I also experimented by combining the bog oak with a contrasting white wood to create surface decoration, which was achieved by laying one wood on top of the other and making a series of cuts through them both, take out alternating pieces and fit them together as a jigsaw; as a result you have two boards in negative and positive patterns. I used this method of construction for a number of commissions and for one piece, a desktop, reversed the colours by making white sycamore the dominant colour.

The overall theme for this project was to achieve a visual im-pact by juxtaposing simple forms in different woods. To keep my mind focused, I decided to use modern English oak for the func-tional work surfaces and, for the vertical surfaces, a combination

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simple statement that would harmonise with the interior space.My intention when designing the kitchen units was to pro-

duce a design using the computer [PL ATE 140] , but to incor-porate free, flowing organic forms rather than the geometrical designs of earlier reception desks [PLATE 109]. Developing the pieces was a time-consuming process: I would produce forms on the computer, print them out, sketch all over them, then struggle to interpret the revisions back on to the computer, check them from every angle, and repeat the procedure until I was happy with the result. The challenge, as with any design, was how to combine the aesthetic ideas with the function, the materials and the structural problems; in the present case trying to design a structure that would hold fixed pieces of equipment with solid

139 Kitchen. The end wall furniture has a built-in cooker, fridge and sink. Adjacent to this on both sides are freestanding cupboards. The tops are in English oak and the doors and carcasses are made from a combination of sawn bog and sawn limed ash.

140 Computer rendering of kitchen

141 Interior showing dining area and kitchen.

The functional aspect of the kitchen having been resolved, the next challenge was how to make the units into pieces of furni-ture, and here the answer lay in the choice of material. By using contrasting woods it would be possible to give the illusion of dif-ferent forms and break up the surface. I like to float large objects off the ground to give them a lighter appearance and I created a flowing organic line along the bottom edge of the black bog-oak doors that linked them together. The limed white ash would be used to make the bodies of the cupboards, with the black doors floating on the surface, and this combination seemed to create a

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in style [PLATE 144].The functional requirements of the chest called for a mixture

of variously sized drawers and cupboards. This was an ideal combination to design on the computer, and I decided to base the concept around a collection of separate units to fulfil the different functions, some with small drawers and other with cupboards. The units would be linked by a base on which all the boxes could be assembled, to unite the elements to form one object. The irregular shapes of the units worked well against the sloping ceiling and angular windows in the room. The final outcome is one of my landmark pieces, in which I feel I have achieved something new and individual, but it is also a full stop in the sense that I feel I can’t develop this design theme any fur-ther. I experienced the same feeling of finality with the bookcase of 1982, with its organic top, whose design I have not repeated or developed since [PLATE 66].

D O O R SI was asked to make the interior doors of the flat into an exciting feature and, never one to refuse a challenge, agreed to embark on another experimental adventure. I thought it would be interest-ing to combine glass with wood in the doors, and so approached Jane McDonald, the glass artist I worked with on the desks at the Norwich Castle Museum [PL ATE 110] and the reception desk at the Stables Theatre [PLATE 112]. I’m not keen on applied decoration, so wanted the glass to become an integral part of the door structure. However, these were fire doors, and as such were required to be 50mm thick. Knowing very little about the craft of glass, I developed sketches that didn’t seem to be feasible without vast expense. I had seen fire doors that had glass panels, so the

142 Dining chair, 2000, figured ash with a variety of laminated back slats in olive, bog oak and ash. h 85cm.

143 Dining table, 2000, hexagonal figured ash top penetrated by twisting laminated legs. d 130cm.

144 Detail of banqueting table, see plate 103.

wood that tends to bend and warp with the weather. I overcame this by creating a strong framework on which the oak tops could be fixed in a traditional manner, whilst the bog-oak panels are superimposed on to a gate-like structure to act as doors.

The finished kitchen [PLATE 139] relates to the angled walls of the interior, the white of the walls blending with the limed cabinets, the floor and skirting flowing into the base, all high-lighted by the doors and worktops that dissect the space.

T H E D I N I N G TA B L E A N D C H A I R SThe design of the dining table and chairs evolved as an exten-sion of the kitchen furniture [PL ATE 141] . The intention was for the most functional unit of the kitchen to be placed at the furthest end of the room from the living space, and then gradu-ally introduce, with the two free-standing kitchen cupboards, a more expressive design, which culminated in the dining table and chairs. The two cupboards extending from the kitchen were made in the same combination of materials as the main kitchen unit, but were separate and individual pieces of furniture. The dining table is made completely in a lighter wood, figured ash, similar in colour to the English oak on the kitchen surfaces, but polished to show the grain, and the chair frames are in the same wood with variety of contrasting veneered back slats. The curves that were used on the vertical planes on the kitchen sideboards are a feature throughout the whole project: with the table they

form the twisting table-legs, breaking through the surface of and supporting the table-top [PLATE 143]; and with the dining chairs they become part of the asymmetric chair back [PLATE 142].

T H E B E D R O O MThe bedroom was to have a small built-in wardrobe, a bed with integral side tables, and a chest of drawers to hold small items, and that was all at this stage; I designed two chairs for the room later, in 2008. This was about the fourth bed I had made, and was essentially just a headboard and integrated side tables with an unseen structure to hold the mattress. The structure was made in rippled ash with the headboard veneered with bog oak, a combination of materials and colours that was used to link all the pieces of furniture in the flat [PLATE 145].

The chest with drawers and cupboards [PL ATE 136] is the centrepiece of the bedroom and acts as a functional piece of sculpture, with the light coming in from a window on the north side forming a dramatic natural spotlight. The colour palette of the wood is similar to that of the other pieces in the flat, with the shape for the chest of drawers made in solid wood. It took a long time to resolve the design, and the process involved a combina-tion of sketches, computer drawings and models. The final piece ties in with a series of work that began with the banqueting table of 1998, when I started producing pieces that were influenced by designing with the aid of the computer, and are deconstructivist

145 Bed head, 2000, veneered with bog oak with sycamore inlay. w 150cm.

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idea of incorporating glass into the doors was not too far-fetched, but the problem was how to make the glass look a part of the door, rather than just a window in it, and for the door to fulfil its fireproof function.

The first idea that seemed possible was to use small, solid-glass cast blocks the same thickness as the doors, but this was rejected in favour of another sketch of long, sinewy organic lines, which required us to be inventive. In discussion with Jane, we decided that thick laminated glass could be applied to either side of the door if a solution could be found for holding it there. I made tem-plates using a freehand curved design, a motif I have used since I discovered Celtic art as a student. Jane added her touch to the templates with oxides so that some of the areas were blacked out, and they then had to be inlaid into either side of the door, cutting through where the glass was clear and leaving a strengthening structure where the glass was blacked out. The inside of the holes was then lined with aluminium foil to reflect the light. The end product was a flat ash door with ribbons of glass running from top to bottom, giving the impression that they were solid pieces piercing the door: a successful illusion [PLATE 147].

146 Detail of bedroom chest, see plate 136.

147 Interior doors with glass panels, 2000, ash with, laminated glass with oxides by Jane McDonald.

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T H E B O O K S H E LV E SThe bookshelves were commissioned for the living area. Their function was not only to display books, but also to act as a music centre and provide storage for CDs; they also had to fit into a small recess in one of the walls, which didn’t give me much op-portunity to be adventurous. The limitations were great, as were the expectations. The usual problem with designing storage without doors is that the contents are inclined to take over from the aesthetics of the piece, and I wanted the contents, whatever colour they were, to be absorbed into the design. I had designed a number of bookcases before and my usual approach was to emphasise the vertical elements and keep the shelves narrow. This piece called for a different approach. The room wasn’t very high, and the alcove was thin and restrictive, so a vertical struc-ture would not have worked. I sketched ideas that would place an emphasis on the horizontal axis, and divert attention from the small alcove. The final solution was achieved by creating a frame around the alcove and designing thick curved shelves that extended beyond each side of the framework. The shelves are 50mm thick and made either thin, solid sawn ash or bog oak sandwiched on to an internal frame; this makes a light, stable structure and was also useful because of the limited quantity of bog oak available [PLATE 150].

S O F T S E AT I N G A N D C O F F E E TA B L EThe next challenge was the soft seating in the same living area as the kitchen and dining furniture. The brief was to provide seat-ing for four people, and a low coffee table. As I was producing the pieces for the flat using the computer, I decided to design forms that would be hard-edged and slightly geometric in style, to relate to the interior and the rest of the furniture. One advantage of de-signing on a computer is the way generated shapes can be moved and turned around in space as easily as a two-dimensional jigsaw [PLATE 150].

Working on the computer for the table design, I created a table-top to the required size and proportions, suspended it at a set height above the ground and then generated various shapes for supports, moving them round independently to collide with the top. With a click of the mouse I then joined the parts together and revolved them to study the result: a very quick way

148 Computer renderings of upholstered chairs and coffee table.

149 Cabinet, 2003, doors veneered with holly, and bog oak top with olive wood interior. h 90cm.

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of realising a design using simple shapes. The table has three sections: the top and a pair of symmetrical shapes that are used as supports. Although in theory it is easy to manipulate these forms on the computer, I found my technical skills lacking and once again was driven to make models of the concept that had been originated on the computer. It is still easier to comprehend a design in solid, model form, so I followed the same route – using the computer and making models – with the design of the chairs. The table was made of laminated birch with bog oak and ash veneers, and the chairs were in a combination of solid rippled ash and yew, with the seats upholstered in thick, hand-woven green silk [PLATE 150].

C A B I N E T SThe final piece of furniture for the flat was to be a cabinet in the corner of the living area. This used the same palette of coloured woods as the coffee table, and was created with same combina-tion of curved and intersecting planes as other designs in the flat. For some reason the final outcome didn’t look right in the corner it was designed for, being rather too delicate in relation to the rest of the furniture [PLATE 149]. In due course the cabinet was moved to a different position where it could stand in its own space, and another piece was made for the original location.

Trying again to design a cabinet for this corner I started from a different angle, and instead of designing on the computer de-cided to work directly on one-fifth scale models. Inspiration for the theme struck when I was out on a family walk among the old quarries on Portland Bill in Dorset. I noticed the way the rocks seemed to be strewn about at random, over a wide area. It re-minded me of my designs that had evolved from rock strata and made me consider how this concept could be further developed. It seemed like a good way to relate the cabinet to the kitchen furniture, using sawn timber including the bog oak, to achieve a rough, boulder-like surface. The question was how I could make a sculptural cabinet with this highly textured wood but, after a number of experiments, I found a way of laminating the wood with composite factory-made boards to make a stable base that could be used for the rock shapes. The final design is made in a combination of sawn bog oak and sawn ash that has been limed. The solution was to make three cabinets that flow round the corner and stand independently, although I prefer them in a particular order the customer moves them around [PLATE 151].

150 Interior showing chairs and coffee table, 2002, chairs in rippled ash and yew, upholstered in hand-woven silk, tables in laminated birch with bog oak and ash veneers.

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151 Three cabinets, 2003, sawn bog oak and sawn limed oak. h 80cm

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11 A House in Oxford

I exhibited work regularly at the Prescote Gallery near Banbury, Oxfordshire, during the 1980s, and it was there that an Oxford-shire couple saw my work, and later commissioned me to design some furniture.

D I N I N G - R O O M C O M M I S S I O N , 1 9 8 0The project was to make them a dining suite: a dining table with an expanding top, six chairs, a sideboard and a corner cupboard [PL ATE 153]. The commissions I had designed up to this time had been for rather grand interiors, like the flat in Mayfair, so I had a feeling that the hard-edged black and white theme that I had used there would be too dramatic for the couple’s smaller house in an Oxfordshire village, and this made me adopt a dif-ferent approach. In early discussions with customers, I show examples of my previous work to see which of my designs they prefer and the sort of materials they would like me to use, and it was as a result of my meeting with them that I felt a softer style would be suitable.

I had recently been to a timber-yard auction and bought a log of cherry that seemed suitable for this project, so I sug-gested using this with sycamore, which was a favourite wood of mine. The final design for the table and chairs is less angular than my earlier work – the table has round ends, and the chairs have rounded corners and upholstered seats. I still used motifs from previous work, such as legs that were wider at the bottom than the top, contrasting wood details and inlaid decoration, and all the furniture was highly polished. The table had an in-tegrated extension folded under the top; the sideboard, which was slightly more angular, had two cupboards with drawers and fitted compartments for cutlery; and the corner cupboard had a traditional arrangement, with a glass display cabinet above a closed cupboard.

152 Jewellery cabinet, 1996, rosewood and sycamore, with enamelwork in silver on handles; enamel birds on interior trays by Jane Short. h 125cm.

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B E D R O O M C O M M I S S I O N , 1 9 8 4On the strength of the dining-room pieces, I was commissioned to create furniture for the clients’ bedroom. As is often the case with my customers, they were keen to suggest designs they liked, or a designer whose work they particularly admired. For this commission, they mentioned the work of Charles Rennie Mackintosh, so I created a design with inlaid lines and enamel inlay that I thought reflected some of the motifs seen in his designs, and showed the customers sample designs. The deci-sion was made to use the same combination of wood as the dining-room suite, cherry and sycamore, with coloured enamel in walnut lines. I made a large chest of drawers, with bespoke silver plated handles, a bed-head with a caned back and knobs to hold cushions, a pair of bedside chests of drawers that matched the large chest [PLATE 157], a full-length dressing mirror and a delicate chair with a caned seat.

153 Dining table with extending leaves, 1980, cherry and sycamore. l 200cm. Part of a dining suite including a table, six chairs, a sideboard and a corner cupboard.

154 Bedroom chair, 1984, cherry and sycamore with enamel inlay and caned seat. H 90cm.

155 Dining chair, 1980, one of six in cherry and sycamore. h 90cm.

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J EW E L L E RY S T O R A G E , 1 9 8 7When I was in London in 1974, I was trying hard to design a product that would sell. I made many objects, including a back-gammon board, which taught me that making a small piece doesn’t take any less time than a large one; in fact, I could almost have completed a full-size chest of drawers in the time it took to make the board. Consequently when these customers asked me to create a box for their small collection of jewellery, I approached it with trepidation. Although they paid a very good pre-arranged price, it took me many more hours than I charged for, which is an ongoing problem for me as I am always experimenting. In this case everything in the construction was experimental. The tops were made out of very thin, 3mm veneered plywood, and were pivoted with specially made rhodium plated hinges; the drawers extended fully on handmade box-wood slides; the design featured inlaid lines made of tarnish-proof rhodium; and all the drawers were individually lined and fitted for the various types of jewellery. The design evolved out of my continuing interest in diagonal structures and decoration. The form stemmed from an idea to make the box perform two functions: as a display frame

opposite

156 Bedroom, 1984, dressing mirror, chest of drawers, two bedside chests, bed head, corner cupboard and chair, cherry and sycamore with walnut and enamel inlay.

above

157 Chest of drawers, 1984, cherry and sycamore with bespoke silver-plated handles. h 90cm.

below

158 Jewellery casket, 1987, figured sycamore with silver, rhodium-plated fittings. H 35cm. See also plate 53.

right

159 Jewellery cabinet, 1988, figured sycamore veneered with with diamond pattern, with silver fittings and inlay; enamel poppies by Jane Short. h 125cm.

REPRO: cut out chest of drawers

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REPRO: extend black backgrounds to area shown here in blue

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door covering the drawer fronts when closed [PLATE 159]. The top has two flap doors and slopes forward, giving the obelisk a pointed top; the triangular base makes the whole cabinet stable. The challenge was to make it without the construction detail interfering with the appearance. In order not to waste any space, all the drawers move on engineered, boxwood extending slides, with the handles becoming a linear feature at the front when the cabinet is closed. I wanted the doors to act as a visual screen when open, so the hinges had to disappear somehow. I had them specially made with a stop to hold the door open. The enamels by Jane Short that were to decorate the screen didn’t work out as originally planned, as Jane considered the piece to be my design and didn’t feel able to fulfil her brief. So instead I drew an outline design of poppies that Jane interpreted with enamel on silver, which I inlaid into the doors with walnut lines to represent the

162 Jewellery cabinet (see also plate 152) with doors open showing interior trays that revolve on bespoke brass hinges; enamelwork in silver on handles created by Jane Short.

previous pages

160 Jewellery cabinet with doors opened showing internal display shelves and drawers; enamel poppies by Jane Short.

for the jewellery when it was open, and as an interesting box when closed. The design resembled Japanese origami, featuring triangular shapes that were also handles. The veneer was a very finely grained figured sycamore that was cut into a lozenge-shaped pattern [PLATE 159].

J EW E L L E RY C A B I N E T, 1 9 8 8The brief for the next piece for the couple, in 1988, was to create a jewellery cabinet with doors that opened to reveal an interior screen, which was to be inlaid with silver and enamelwork by Jane Short [PL ATE 160] . Working on a similar theme as the first jewellery box, the objective was to produce a piece that worked well as a design when open as well as closed. I started by resolving the storage for the pieces of jewellery, which were of various sizes, in order to determine the size of the whole cabinet. I worked on a number of ideas, and came up with a solution by using cardboard models to resolve the design issues. The final piece retained the origami appearance of the cardboard model, and when closed resembled an obelisk. Looking from the top the main body of the tower is square with a corner facing towards the front, the drawers coming out from alternating sides with the

161 Sketch for jewellery cabinet (see plates 152 and 162).

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Repro: lighten and neutralise background

stalks. The finished piece was exhibited at Sotheby’s, London, in a contemporary crafts exhibition in 1988 and was judged the best piece of work at the show by the general public, while a simple piece of silverware by Michael Rowe was chosen by the design judges. This has been a typical response to my work since I was at college, with a general audience being more receptive than people in the design world.

J EW E L L E RY C A B I N E T, 1 9 9 6In 1996 I was asked to make another cabinet [PLATE 152], this time to store the necklaces for the customers’ growing collection of contemporary jewellery. The necklaces were to be stored verti-cally so that they could be viewed as they would appear when worn. The resolution I found for this was to incorporate a series of vertical trays that were pivoted so that work could be stored on both sides [PL ATE 161] . The trays were held in four boxes, with the front two swinging open so that when the cabinet was fully open, four trays of jewellery would be on view at a time, pivoted on bespoke hinges [PLATE 162]. The cabinet was then mounted on a stand. The design referred back to some of my early designs that used a lattice under-frame, with the structure and the decoration being intertwined as in the Great Dixter book table [PL ATE 82] . Part of the brief was that the piece should include Jane Short’s enamel work again; this time it features in the handles on the front and all the interior trays, which features pictures of birds. The cabinet was made from rosewood and sycamore.

J EW E L L E RY C A B I N E T, 2 0 0 4In 2004 I was commissioned to make a cabinet for small pieces of jewellery. This time there was no detailed brief, with only a request for the jewellery to be easily accessible. In our discus-sions at the start of the project, it was decided that the piece would be hung on a wall and was to be made in similar materi-als to the main woods used for the bedroom furniture, cherry and sycamore. Because the space where the cabinet was to be hung was rather limited, it could not protrude too far from the wall, so instead of designing a box with four corners I created a cabinet that was designed like a slice of cake in plan, with one curved side and two flat, the curved side fitted to the wall. The seventeen triangular drawers with small handles were pivoted from the front part on a large metal spine [PLATE 163]. When the drawers are all closed it is very difficult to locate a particular item, so I added inlaid different coloured glass-type material in all the handles. The drawers are of various heights and lined in suede.

163 Jewellery cabinet, 2004, cherry and figured sycamore, drawer handles with coloured glass inlay, drawers lined in suede; revolving trays pivoted on a bespoke steel spine at the front of the piece. h 75cm.

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12 A home in Marylebone

It is rare for people to commission one-off furniture from me, and they usually do so as a result of seeing my work on display, rather than in a book or magazine, or online. Photographs are useful for showing the range of designs that I have produced, but they don’t seem to result in commissions. The Crafts Council and a number of galleries have included my work in their slide indexes and photographs for many years but this has only once led directly to a commission. That was in 1986, when a couple liv-ing in Marylebone, London, saw photographs of my pieces at the Crafts Council in North London. They have become longstanding customers and I have gradually furnished their entire home, one piece at a time.

D I N I N G F U R N I T U R E, 1 9 8 6The first project was to design and make an extending dining table and set of chairs, within a very tight budget, I was shown pictures of furniture they had seen in a magazine to give me an indication of their thoughts. This was a very different challenge to what I was used to, but I was perfectly happy to take it on. I have always enjoyed making work at an affordable cost, in the hope that by doing so I might chance on a design that could be mass-produced and would earn me a fortune. A new way of thinking was called for; whereas in my one-off projects I often incorporated a number of visual themes such as art deco, arts and crafts, and my own lattice design, in the present case I decided I would design the furniture as if it was to be manufactured, con-centrating on simple production methods and on the structure and function determining the aesthetics.

Designing chairs has always been one of my favourite chal-lenges, so was the first problem to be tackled. Using the new industrial-design approach, I looked for a process that could be mechanised. My experiments with laminating wood had shown that, if the design was kept simple, chair backs could be produced quickly, and so this became the basis of the design. My early

164 Interior showing wardrobes and jewellery cabinet.

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165 Bed and two chests of drawers, 1989, figured sycamore and cherry. The bed features drawers under the frame and small retractable shelves, and one chest of drawers has an extendable mirror and small drawers for jewellery.

166 Writing desk, shown open, with armchair, screen and stacking tables, 1991–2011, ash and oak.

sketches closely resembled a chair design produced by the Pearl Dot furniture company, another small business like mine. The chair had a solid wood seat to which the legs were attached, the two back legs extending to create a plain back support joined by a top rail. In my design I kept the two simple plain leg back supports but, instead of using the thick laminations of the Pearl Dot chair and the solid wood seat, I used thin laminations braced with another piece of wood, creating a ‘T’-shaped section.and an upholstered seat. The brace, which supported the back, also acted as a decorative element, and I used a contrasting wood to emphasis this feature. It also connected visually with the rails that supported the seat and the front legs [PLATE 128].

At the same time I also developed an armchair with the same ribs that I thought was more successful than the chairs, but it needed a bit of handcrafting to resolve some of the joints so the manufacturing concept was compromised, although both chairs functioned very well. The table followed the same theme as the chairs, with ribbed legs. The table-top was a little more difficult as it had to expand from a round to an oval shape, with the mechanism concealed underneath the top. Although I felt at the time that the visual unity was slightly compromised by this mechanism, it functioned efficiently. Over the years I came to realise that one partner in this couple has a particular liking

for furniture that acts like a machine and transforms into other shapes, allowing it to be used for more than one function, and this table was the first of many such challenges I was set by these customers over the years.

T W O C H E S T S O F D R AW E R S A N D A B E D, 1 9 8 9The design of the two chests of drawers and a bed was deter-mined by the space available and the various requirements. The bed was to have a wooden surround, drawers underneath the mattress, and small retractable shelves that also acted as tables to hold small objects like breakfast china. The with of the chests was determined by the alcove in which they were to fit, and one of them also had to function as an extendable ladies’ dressing-table with a mirror and small drawers for jewellery. Otherwise I had a free hand. The chests were designed as a matching pair, and all three pieces were made in a combination of cherry wood and sycamore. In 1986 I had made a suite of bedroom furniture with the same combination of woods, which had been inspired by the customers’ wish to have a Charles Rennie Mackintosh-style de-sign. This suite had no prescribed influence, so I used the simple curves needed for the bed-base sides as a theme, with sycamore as a contrast on the flat planes, creating a simple, unfussy design [PLATE 165].

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Repro: colour match light wood to image on right

Over the next couple of years, I made furniture for the en-trance hall in a similar style, followed by a small mirror and a narrow sideboard that also acted as storage for a collection of Ordnance Survey maps.

W R I T I N G D E S K , 1 9 9 1My next commission was a writing desk, and was the first of a number of projects that seemed to be as much about making ma-chines as making furniture. Each of them had to be approached in a similar way to the dining furniture, with the practical func-tion dominating the visual outcome. This was a bit of a challenge for me, as my instinct is to create objects in which function and manufacturing method are important, but the visual aspect dominates.

The brief was to design a desk that looked like a table when closed but, when opened up, was a desk with drawers, a sloping top, pinboard, built-in lighting and compartments for pencils and other equipment. This required all my ingenuity, and the result-ing design was dictated by the function; it is essentially a wooden machine for the home [PLATE 166], made in ash and oak.

O B E L I S K , 1 9 9 3The design of the next project, a pair of cabinets to store and dis-play the customers’ CD collection, was inspired by an Egyptian obelisk with simple, carved decoration that they had seen while on holiday. I needed to make a structure that would be stable, not have excessive decoration, and would look good both open and closed [PLATE 168].

I had made a jewellery cabinet in 1988 for my customers in Oxford that was based on an obelisk form [PL ATE 159] with decorative doors and drawers, and this became the basis of the new design.

The resulting design was an arrangement of flat rectangular planes, the cupboards tapering slightly to the top so the doors had to be constructed of two triangles at different angles, with the top and base both having sloping planes. The hinges are hid-den in the edges, and a concealed handle to open the top acts as a catch for the doors, to keep the obelisk unadorned as much as possible. The only decorative element is the lines that highlight the change in planes and indicate the colour of the interior. Both cabinets are veneered in a fine bird’s-eye maple, with each one having a different colour veneered interior and slightly different bases that contain a quantity of lead to make the obelisk stable.

I have used the triangular shape in many of my designs, with customers often complaining about stubbing their toes. It first evolved in the backgammon table I made in 1977 [PL ATE 40] and I have used it continually in the lattice table that evolved from this design. As a three-dimensional form I started to use the triangle on the origami-inspired jewellery casket in 1987.

K I T C H E N , 1 9 9 8Designing fitted kitchens is not one of my favourite commis-sions, and the brief for this project called for more ingenuity than usual. It wasn’t a kitchen in the conventional sense, so much as a space-capsule for cooking, in which all the equipment had to be reached from one standing position. This is a slight exaggeration, but the brief did involve designing within a small fixed space in which a number of objects had to fit [PLATE 167]. The cupboards above the worktop had to close so that the contents would be out of sight, there were to be no protruding objects such as conven-tional doors, and it had to be easy to clean. On top of all that, it had to look like a piece of furniture.

The base units were fairly straightforward, consisting of conventional cupboards and drawers, except they needed to be fitted out with compartments. The problematic feature was the cupboards above the worktops, for which hinged doors were not

167 Bespoke kitchen, 1998, ash with sliding coloured plywood doors.

168 Obelisk cd music cabinet, 1993, bird’s-eye maple with interior in coloured venee, shown closed and open. One of a pair. h 180cm.

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J EW E L L E RY C A B I N E T, 2 0 0 0After 1996 I began to use computer-aided designs for smaller, one-off commissions, such as this cabinet to hold jewellery and other small objects. The workings of this cabinet originated in a sketchbook design of stacked drawers. When I was converting the drawings to a computer image, I found that the programme allowed me to slide drawers over each other in different posi-tions, cutting them off at different lengths and even tipping everything over at an angle. It would have been difficult for me to have envisaged this arrangement if I had been working from a sketchbook, and far too daring to tip the design over like this, as I would have considered the technical challenge of calculating the angles too difficult to consider. The cabinet has a square base filled with sheets of lead to stabilise the tall and sloping design, and has extending drawers with compartments of varying size that slide through the cabinet horizontally [PLATE 169].

B O O K C A S E A N D D I S P L AY C A B I N E T, 1 9 9 7This bookcase design, made in 1997, features drawers and a cup-board to store files, and has a grey interior and bronze handles. As it is a completely functional piece of furniture, I decided to base the design on the other, simple pieces of furniture in the house, and to use a combination of a white wood, in this case maple, and a red wood, pear, adding a touch of decoration in the bronze handles [PLATE 170].

169 Two views of Jewellery cabinet, 2000, holly and coloured veneers. h 90cm. The top opens to reveal a mirror, and the drawers that slide open. There is a small cupboard at the bottom.

170 Bookcase and cabinet, 1997, maple and pear with bronze handles. h 210cm.

171 Display cabinet, 2000, figured sycamore with coloured veneer panels, glazed doors and built-in lighting. h 220cm.

possible because of the lack of space, and yet the kitchen had to blend in with the rest of the furniture in the open-plan room, and eventually we decided on fitting narrow, pull-out cupboards on slides to hold small objects, while the larger cupboards adja-cent had sliding doors that lifted up and rolled over the top of the cabinet. This was achieved by using thin 1.5mm ply for the doors, that moved up and down in frictionless plastic grooves. It is still functioning efficiently today, so I think can be regarded as a success. I also made a free-standing chest of drawers that stood at one end of the kitchen and linked up visually with the living-room area, in which I was asked to develop a mechanism to allow the drawers to be accessed from both sides. A refit in 2008 required me to design a cupboard to hold new appliances, placed in the corner so that no space was wasted, which included more pull-out drawers and cupboards.

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The brief was to make a cabinet to fill an entire alcove, to display drinking glasses, with built-in lighting behind, and to store cookery books on open display. Made in sycamore with coloured veneer panels, the design was originated on the computer using a grid arrangement, with the backs of the shelves in various col-ours and the centre section back-lit with glazed doors to display the glasses. The bookcase areas are left open, and storage at the base of the unit is hidden behind doors. Because the cabinet is so large, it had to be made in sections and put together on site using knock-down fittings [PLATE 171].

S L I D I N G S T O R A G E C A B I N E T S, 2 0 0 4This was the third piece of furniture for the house that was de-signed using the computer. The brief was to create a piece that could close off one section of the house when required, but still look like a piece of furniture rather than a door. It also had to provide storage for books, a CD collection, a projector and other objects. I evolved a design [PLATE 172] that was based on low plinths, which hid the sliding mechanism so that there were no

172 Storage cabinets, 2004, cherry and sycamore with coloured and exotic veneers. The piece is constructed in two halves that slide apart to expose a doorway. h 200cm.

173 Interior showing shoji over windows, two lamps and a table with storage in the top, 2008; shoji made from ash with Japanese paper.

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W R I T I N G BU R E AU, 2 0 0 6A small desk was commissioned in 2006, which was to close up completely yet also act as a storage unit for various office-related pieces of equipment and stationery. It had to open magically, like a flower, to provide a large writing surface [PLATE 173].

A few years earlier I had made a jewellery cabinet that was veneered in different colours according to various functions, and after working on a number of design approaches for the current piece, I came back to this earlier project piece for inspiration [PLATE 169], but in this case used the coloured panels to conceal the function. The most difficult problem to resolve was how to include a large writing surface that could be folded away inside such a small object. I achieved this by making the top front panel fold upwards to expose a drawer that could be pulled out, and designing top and side panels that fold backwards out of the way. When closed, the different coloured panels conceal all the functions of the piece – the desk, drawers and cupboards – that disappear inside the simple shape [PLATE 174]. The top drawer is used to store a laptop, and the other office equipment is kept in cupboards; slide-out drawers below provide further storage and house the wiring for the computer and built-in lighting.

175 Wardrobe, 2011, sawn limed sawn oak doors, with coloured veneer surround concealing air conditioning and built-in lighting. w 350cm.

176 Detail showing handles for wardrobe, plate 175.

W A R D R O B E, 2 0 0 9For the bedroom of this customer I had already made a jewellery cabinet in 2000 [ 193] the bed and two chests of drawers in 1989 [187], and in 2009 I was asked to add a fitted wardrobe. My design technique and working method had changed considerably since I designed the chests and bed, and the customers were happy for me to produce a design more in keeping with the more recent jewellery cabinet. As with all my work for these particular cus-tomers, there were mechanisms concealed beneath the surface, and this piece has concealed air-conditioning and built-in light-ing. The design consists of six large doors standing proud in the centre of the space, surrounded with smaller cupboards to the sides and above, with three drawers underneath. The doors are in sawn limed oak, and the cupboards and drawers that surround them are veneered with a frame of cherry around a coloured veneer design [PLATE 175].

174 Two views of writing bureau, 2006, show when closed and open, revealing the desk, cupboards and drawers, 2006, coloured veneer exterior with sycamore interior. h 100cm.

visible runners in the doorway; other slides that held the cabinet to the wall were secreted behind the tall parts. The visual aspect was inspired by my continuing interest in deconstructionist architecture, and the banqueting table designed in 1998 [PLATE 103] . The main woods in this piece are sycamore and cherry combined with coloured and exotic veneers.

F O U R P A I R S O F S L I D I N G S H O J I , 2 0 0 8The customers’ brief was to create a window blind based on the design of a Japanese shoji, a sliding door made of a latticed screen covered in paper, in order to allow in diffused light during the daytime and to cut out some of the street views. Although I had never studied the craft of screenmaking, I went home armed with a book on the subject and some Japanese handmade paper, hop-ing to find inspiration. The basic format was fairly simple and I found I could make the screens without too much trouble; fitting the hidden electrical closing mechanism was a bit more difficult, however. I used the basic design of a grid of small panels, adding a theme by the insertion of a few extra rails. I had noticed in Japanese prints how light or rain was expressed in a linear way, so on the first set of screens I created an abstract motif of rain using the same wooden strips as the basic grid [PLATE 166]. The design worked well for the customer, so gradually over the next few years I made three more sets; one has a sunrise motif [PLATE 173], one is plain, and the last repeats the rain theme.

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13 Experimenting with styles

Art deco is the style to which my early work is most closely related. At the beginning of my career I had little knowledge of art deco other than certain iconic buildings such as the chain of Odeon cinemas. I was young and adopting in my designs the forms and lines that appealed to me, and the art-deco influence was also probably merged in my work with the 1960s fashion for geometric curves and ziggurat designs. At the time I was under the impression that I was influenced by Celtic art rather than art deco, as that was my favourite genre then, and it does share some design motifs with the latter.

The only time I was directly inspired by an authentic piece of art-deco design was when commissioned to make a dining suite in 1977 [PLATE 39], for a room whose interior design was designed by Max Glendinning and reminded me of a 1930s inte-rior. Trying to absorb as much information as possible on my first visit in order to create a design that fitted the interior, I noticed a stylish sofa that I later found out was created by Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann in about 1922. It was inevitable that the work of these two designers would influence my design. Although the dining table and chairs were a success with the customer and I was asked to create a sideboard, I didn’t want to and couldn’t create a pastiche of Ruhlmann, now that I had seen more examples of his work, so I never quite resolved a suitable solution.

I have never entirely accepted the label art deco as a descrip-tion of my work. In this case I had been asked for something in that specific style and so in a sense do not regard it as completely my own design. Since this commission, I have not copied or adapted any style so directly, and only absorb or use small aspects of other styles that will then develop round my own designs. The distinctive features of much of my work include the use of reverse tapered legs, along with the use of contrasting woods, veneers, inlay and organic curved shapes. I don’t feel comfortable about adopting another style directly, as it seems to me a bit like poaching.

177 Office interior showing desk, 1984, with chair and waste-paper bin

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which was continued in the Arabic-influenced table and chairs described above, became an important aspect of my work and was used as a structural and decorative motif in many small tables and the structures [PLATE 179].

Another style I borrowed from the gothic, for a chair com-mission in 1981 for Milton Manor [PLATE 180]. The design, al-though reflecting the gothic style, continued a theme that I began with my Windsor chair design of 1976 [PL ATE 22] , in which I experimented with the relationship between the back legs and the arms on the round chair back. The only nod to gothic was in the pointed top of the chair back, but what I did not realise at the time was that the flowing, organic nature of the chair design was a pointer to the future when I would make furniture on a natu-ralistic theme, as I became more confident in my own abilities.

This gothic chair of 1981 was the last work that acknowledged a historical English style. With later projects I was to be influ-enced more by Japanese art and design and by the architectural ideas of Frank O. Gehry. The first of these was when I was asked by customers in 1984 to design a desk that was to be placed in front of a Japanese screen, and it seemed necessary to make some acknowledgement of this work of art [PLATE 177]. At that

179 One of a pair of bedside tables, 1982, figured sycamore and walnut,. w 50cm

180 Ceremonial chair, 1981, carved cherry with leather seat. h 90cm.

In 1995 I was approached by the new owners of this dining set to create a sideboard, another larger dining table, a console table and two armchairs. At this time I was able to provide a solution which, although art deco in appearance, allowed me to introduce some of my own motifs [PLATE 178]. The commission to make a backgammon table and chairs around 1977 is a typical exam-ple of my usual approach. I wanted to suggest an Arabic style as the commission was for a customer in Kuwait, so instead of researching Arabic patterns too deeply, developed designs from my own limited knowledge. I knew that geometric designs were a common feature of Islamic art and, as this was also a feature of my work, I used this aspect of my design vocabulary, extending it into an open lattice to enhance the effect [PLATE 41].

At the start of my career I was rather a chameleon in the way I adapted my style and pieces to my customers’ inclinations. When one customer wanted an arts-and-crafts feel to their com-mission [PLATE 153], the use of solid wood seemed to help fit in with the required theme, but I also included features of my own style, such as the reversed tapered leg and the contrasting coloured woods, and even some art-deco symbols as decoration. When the same customers in their next commission wanted a Charles Rennie Mackintosh-style chest of drawers [PLATE 157] I developed the idea a bit further, adding linear inlay together with coloured enamels in all the furniture for the room. Although I have occasionally made use of styles from other periods, I find that when my designs are underway, I am led off in other crea-tive directions of my own. The lattice design of my first chair,

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time I had not been to Japan, so my knowledge of its art and architecture was pretty sketchy. I had seen images of temples and their torii (temple gates), as well as shoji (screens) and kimonos, all of which appeared to me very stylised with simple, dominant forms. I was familiar with the standard pedestal desk that looked very imposing, but here I was looking for a form that was not a traditional bureau but an open-topped desk with drawers. After many attempts I produced a variation on the pedestal desk but much lighter in style, with less emphasis on the drawers. I added upturned ends to the desk, which was reminiscent of the style of torii and also temple roofs. My work is generally bottom-weighted, giving it a firm foundation, so this design was not a departure from the themes I was working with; I also used a light wood, hornbeam, highlighted with dark wood inlays, another common feature of my work.

The next piece on a Japanese theme was a sideboard [PLATE 52], which I based entirely on the outline of a kimono when it is hung up for display. What interested me was how the simple tra-ditional shape of a kimono could be decorated with a pattern or image that was arranged asymmetrically on the kimono. I made a simple box with doors, which was dissected by a horizontal

178 Sideboard, 1995, rosewood and sycamore, one of the additions to the dining suite made in 1977, see plate 39. w 260cm.

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plane that gently turned up at the ends like a Japanese temple roof. I gave it a clean, symmetrical form, and then inlaid a simple honeycomb pattern all over the box in an asymmetrical design.

Recent pieces that have been directly influenced by the Japa-nese theme are four sets of shoji, for which I used a traditional form combining paper and a lattice-wood frame. On two of these I created a decorative pattern from thin wooden pieces, one of them suggesting rain, and another sunrise [PLATE 166].

In 1987 I was able to develop a deconstructivist theme when I was designing the banqueting table [PL ATE 103] , and have continued with this style, mixing it with my own interest in naturalistic ideas, most noticeably in the rock forms I made after 2004 [PLATE 151].

These influences and inspirations do not mean that I have no voice of my own; only that I have no fixed style I feel I have to pursue, as I am more interested in experimenting with notions and adapting them to practical requirements.

181 Tall-Boy chest of drawers, 2012, alternating knotty oak and lined ash drawers. H 180cm.

182 Sofa table, 2012, figured sycamore and coloured veneers. W 150cm.

opposite

183 Chair back, 2000, olive, zebrano, bog oak and ash chair, see plate 142.

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14 The designer–maker

As a trained furniture designer fresh out of college in 1971, I never contemplated a situation in which I would be self-employed mak-ing one-off designs. In 1976, when I had my first exhibition at the RCA, I had a vague belief that this could be the beginning of my career as a designer making products that were manufactured in a small factory. The idea that a furniture designer could have the same kind of output as a sculptor producing individual pieces never crossed my mind, but that’s how it turned out, and in 1980 my passport described my profession as ‘Designer/Maker’.

In industry it is conventional to split the process of creating a new piece of furniture into designing and making, especially as machines are taking over the latter process. The few times I have worked solely as a designer and passed my work on to a craftsman with no further involvement, I have felt that the final product was intangibly different from what I had intended. When I make a piece from my own designs I alter details as I pro-gress, sometimes intentionally but occasionally by chance, and work out the best methods of construction that are not always apparent from the original drawings. Such a method cannot be followed easily, or perhaps at all, when other people are making the designs. During my years as a designer craftsman I have only ever employed a maximum of three people, because with this small number it is possible to keep control over a design while it is being executed.

I find it hard just to be a designer without having a hand in the making, although it is the challenge of the design that initially motivates and encourages me to continue. The feeling of creat-ing something new is like a discovery, and gives me the sort of euphoric uplift that I feel when I struggled to the summit of a hill on a bright day and suddenly see the view open up before me. Often the process is such a struggle that trying to realise my aspirations blinds me to what I have created, so that it is often years before I see the results objectively, but such is the nature of my design addiction.

184 Sketches for chairs.

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up having little control over the appearance of the final object. As a craftsman I want the skill and craft to be appreciated, but know as a designer that it will always take second place. As with a cathedral that may have taken generations to build, it is the presence of the work of art that captures our imagination rather than considering the man-hours taken to make it.

I enjoy making my work but the actual act of constructing has another reward, a more therapeutic pleasure based on the physical involvement of making and the technical skills in resolv-ing problems and expanding the limits of my knowledge and practical abilities. There is a kind of satisfaction in making things and looking back at the results of one’s labours, but it is the final piece by which I am judged as a designer.

I might choose some visual concept as the basis of a design, but it is fanciful to pretend that I look for inspiration in a vacuum, as in reality you have to work within certain parameters, set by customers or oneself. Although I am working with form, colour, texture and three-dimensional space, my main objective is to

make a functional piece of furniture. When starting a commis-sion I will begin by working out a functional framework, such as overall size and practical function, leaving other details such as the type of wood and the colour until I come to consider the design. It has always been a struggle to make objects based purely on concepts, and I find it essential to have this framework on which to form my creative ideas, but I do also like resolving practical problems, and thus enjoy these two aspects of my work.

Once I am given a brief, I sit down with a pencil and a blank piece of paper. I begin with the pencil drifting over the paper while I consider the design, the aesthetics, the function and the material. I will concentrate on different areas depending on the project; with a chair design, for example, I will consider some of its distinct features such as the parts of the body that have to be supported, whether wood should be used, what technique should be adopted, such as laminating or steambending, do I use traditional joints, will there be upholstery, will there be arms, and so on. I think about whether this chair should be original or be

My spirits are lifted when embarking on a new project as a whole set of questions begin to run through my mind: how adventurous can I be, should I start on a completely new theme or develop an existing one, should I use new materials, and so on. My first objective is to resolve a concept on which to build the design. The image, style or appearance of a project has always been my main interest, so sorting out these aspects is the biggest challenge. I sketch random ideas, sometimes taking photographs of landscapes or looking at other art forms, to try to find a visual link that will guide me forward. I select some of these outline sketches to develop in my mind, measuring them against the functional requirements, structure and construction methods, then narrowing the selection down further. At this point, if a general concept hasn’t arisen, I like to put the design to one side and mull over the problem, waiting for a Eureka moment.

I always try to make the first stage of the design process as relaxed as possible, so that while I’m trying to resolve the aes-thetics I’m not sidetracked by technical or functional problems. At the back of my mind I know that the technical aspects, and the craft and materials are integral to the design, but also that if they are allowed to dominate the early design stages I’ll end

185 rw outside the Royal College of Art, London, 1971.

186 Landscape, Sextons Burrow, Ilfracombe, taken by Ashley Cartwright.

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with the technical advances in machinery and the changes in the furniture market over the course of my career, I see a changed world. When I started there was a large craft industry, still mak-ing furniture using hand skills. I remember going to Parker Knoll as a student and seeing a whole workshop of upholster-ers, mouths full of tacks, making sofas; today there seem to be two furniture industries, one using great machines like robots with a car-assembly production line, and another made up of small workshops still using a lot of hand skills but also every mechanical aid available. Workshops like Edward Barnsley’s, in Hampshire, which construct furniture, and cut joints such as dovetails by hand, are now rare. Today there are only a few workshops, mainly making reproduction or restoration furni-ture, which would consider undertaking this time-consuming hand-produced details.

In the 1960s there was one industry making furniture from wood, comprising big and small factories and a few tiny workshops, all using essentially the same machines. Today the furniture industry in Europe has almost completely stopped using wood in its solid form, preferring composite materials such as chipboard, plastics and metal, so the demand for skilled cabinet-makers has almost disappeared. Wood by its nature is variable, with its knots and grains, so each piece has to be treated differently, with a craftsperson constantly assessing its condition and deciding how to prepare it for use. This is not efficient for big businesses, so the use of solid wood in furniture has gener-ally been carried on only by small workshops that adapt easily to changing circumstances. These changes were highlighted with the craft revival in the 1970s and 1980s, when graduates of the 1960s wanted to break away from the conservative attitudes

based on an idea that has been used by another designer or on a traditional chair form. Sometimes I will scan my small library of art, architecture, photography and furniture books, to put myself in the mood to design; what I’m looking for is a strategy, a source of inspiration, to set me off in some direction. I will sketch a number of ideas on various themes, the eventual direction being chosen by instinct mixed with an element of structured thought.

The romantic view of sketching concepts and then experienc-ing a blinding Eureka moment is something of a rarity; in reality designing furniture is hard graft, and requires achieving a bal-ance of the visual aspect, construction problems and functional needs. Over the thirty years or so that I have been designing, I have used a number of themes to forward my ideas. At the begin-ning I looked to eighteenth-century furniture as a springboard, using it to produce a series of work based on geometric themes. As I became more confident of my own abilities, I developed ideas inspired by natural phenomena such as wind, trees and rocks. The other major theme I employ today is abstract shapes, particularly asymmetric geometric forms, and this theme is still evolving through my ongoing experiments with computer-aided design.

Although I use different themes to progress with a design, I also tend to use personal style features, some of which I have incorporated into my work since the start of my career. One is the use of contrasting woods to highlight the forms, especially as the colour of wood over time tends to turn a similar brown, which would mean losing the definition of the decoration and form that I was trying to realise. Another is the inverted tapered leg that I use to emphasise the solidity of an object and as a connection to the ground, like a tree. Although these design characteristics appear in most of my work, I still always aim to treat each piece as an individual work, like a piece of sculpture.

For me, designing never works in a straight line, from concept and inspiration through to design, a working drawing and then finally the making of the piece from the drawing. I usually have to return many times to the beginning and start again in another direction, and then the design can often take an unexpected turn if I am struck by a new idea. It may be lack of confidence that makes me contemplate a problem a long time before I can come to a decision. When at last I have a sketch design that I am fairly content with, I either realise it in a scale model using wood, plas-ticine, a glue gun and nails, or draw and render it on a computer. I will then produce a working drawing and start the construction, altering and refining details throughout the process, with the design development never really ending until I have polished the final object. As I am usually working on two or three projects at a time, this long, drawn-out design process can be accomplished without business coming to a halt.

Today, when I look at my way of designing and compare it

187 Sketches for chairs, see plate 54.

188 Computer rendering of sofa, see plate 150

189 Collection of models made over many years.

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of the establishment and set up their own businesses. Without much money it was simpler to develop new products using the craft methods of the past, with natural materials such as wood, clay or metal. Along with many others, I found myself carrying on the craft tradition in parallel with a slowly diminishing in-dustry of other specialised craftspeople. The difference was that we were individual designers or artists, and could create entire objects independently, rather than working in a specialist area such as dovetail making, carving, cabinet-making, chair making, turning, and so on.

A great number of small businesses thrived at that time, creating new and original designs that were very different from those produced by the furniture industry. The many small, in-dependent galleries promoted a variety of crafts, and thus aided the new enterprises, but over time the industry changed, and contemporary designs were produced at cheaper prices. Today there is an abundance of new furniture design being produced all the time, using the same production techniques as those used for making cars and products such as computers. Most aspiring

graduates want to design and create industrial products. When I started my career, the handmade aesthetic of the arts-and-crafts movement was revered, and designer-makers like me were seen as couturiers of furniture, makers of Rolls Royce-quality func-tional pieces. Today designers who work for industry are in the ascendant and, whereas before one-off craft furniture was seen as being avant-garde, it is now regarded more as sculpture. The quality of the design and fine details such as inlays and joints were appreciated in the 1970s, whereas today it is the sculptural qualities of texture and woodiness that is noticed. I design in the same manner as did when I started, adapting slightly when I began to use computers, but still l endeavour to produce unique, challenging and beautiful functional furniture.

190 Chest of drawers, with fifteen drawers and a dressing mirror, 2009, veneered with burr redwood, ebony, Indian laurel, bog oak, and olive. w 150cm.

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1966

CHAIRPolyurethane covered in pink and brown stretch fabric, with acrylic tubular feet. h 80cm. Plate 4.

1968

BARBECUEStoneware hand-coiled in sections. h 160cm. Plate 3.

EASY CHAIRGold-painted laminated beech seat with silver upholstery. h 90cm. Plate 2.

CHAIRLaminated and painted beech, upholstered in green velvet. h 90cm.

1971

LIVING-POD Fibreglass and steel. Project made for final degree show, rca. Made up of expandable modules, each 90cm2. Plate 6.

CHAIRFibreglass structure and chromed steel, with silver fabric upholstery. h 80cm. Plate 1.

MOON-BUGGY TABLEVeneered with stained sycamore. Made by Ron Lenthel at the rca. w 55cm. Plate 5.

15 The Furniture of Rupert Williamson complete catalogue 1966–2013

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1977

RIBBON TABLE Veneered with satin and with rosewood inlay. w 90cm.

SMALL COFFEE TABLE Veneered with satinwood and ebony. Diameter 75cm.

BACKGAMMON TABLE Sycamore, top veneered in bird’s-eye maple with walnut inlay, decorative centrepiece in silver with mother-of-pearl inlay made by Brian Glassar. Part of a set with four dining chairs (see entry below and Plate 28). w 120cm. Plate 40.

DINING CHAIRSycamore: with walnut inlay. One of four, made for a backgammon table (see entry above and Plate 40). h 90cm. Plate 28.

DINING TABLE Maple and rosewood. Part of a set with ten chairs (see entry below and Plate 30). Diameter 160cm. Plate 39.

DINING CHAIRMaple and rosewood. One of ten, made for a round dining table (see entry above and Plate 39). h 90cm. Plate 30.

1978

TABLECherry with sycamore. w 90cm.

TABLESycamore with ebony. w 90cm.

TABLESycamore with ebony. w 90cm.

1979

DINING TABLE WITH EXPANDING LEAVES Solid English walnut top and sycamore. Part of a set with twelve chairs (see entry below and Plate 57). w 12cm closed; 270cm extended. Plate 44.

DINING CHAIRFigured sycamore with walnut inlay. One of twelve, made for a dining table (see entry above and Plate 44). h 90cm. Plate 57.

1973

STOR AGE CABINETPainted plywood with oak facings. h 165cm. Plate 10.

FUTON CHAIRCanvas and plywood. h 80cm.

1974

CHAIRBeech, stained blue. h 110cm. Plate 13.

1975

STOR AGE CABINET AND BOOKCASE Douglas fir with silver painted brackets. h 120cm. Plate 11.

WARDROBEVeneered with walnut; box-wood and kingwood inlay. h 170cm. Plate 12.

DRESSERCherry. h 180cm.

ARMCHAIRMahogany veneered with yew; ebony inlay; upholstered in leather. h 80cm. Plate 23.

1976

CUPBOARDMaple veneered with bird’s-eye maple; walnut inlay. h 150cm. Warwick Arts Trust. See Plate 22.

DINING TABLEMaple veneered with bird’s-eye maple; walnut inlay. Diameter 120cm. Plate 22.

DINING CHAIR Maple with wenge inlay. h 90cm. Victoria and Albert Museum collection. Plates [22 (group), 26].

STOOL Cherry with kingwood stretchers and dowels, and caned seat. One of six. h 65cm. Plate 24.

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1983

CHAIRAsh. Prototype using the steambending process. h 80cm.

ARMCHAIRFigured sycamore with walnut inlay. h 90cm.

DRESSING TABLE AND STOOLCherry and sycamore. w 90cm.

DINING TABLE Chestnut and enamelled steel structure with laminated table-top. Part of a set with eight chairs. w 100 cm. Plate 132.

DINING CHAIRChestnut and enamelled steel structure; upholstered in cloth by Roger Oates. One of twenty made for a dining table. h 90cm.

TABLEYew with figured sycamore. w 270cm.

SMALL TABLEFigured sycamore with walnut. w 30cm.

TABLEEbony with figured sycamore. w 270cm. Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.

1984

CABINETCarcass made of mixed materials, veneered with macassar ebony, ash and walnut. h 70cm. Plate 92.

CABINETCarcass made of mixed materials, veneered with macassar ebony, ash and walnut, with gold-leaf flecks on the top. h 70cm. Plate 93.

ARMCHAIRSteambent hornbeam, upholstered in leather. One of a pair. h 90cm. Plate 49.

FRENICH DESKHornbeam with walnut inlay and bronze handles. W 150cm. Plate 48.

DESK, ARMCHAIR AND WASTE-PAPER BIN Hornbeam; waste-paper bin in sycamore. Desk w 150cm.  Plate 177.

HALL CHAIRSycamore with walnut inlay, upholstered in suede. One of a pair. h 90cm. Plate 29.

ARMCHAIRSteambent sycamore with cloth upholstery. Part of a commission for the offices of Skybridge, London, including three boardroom tables (see entry below), sideboards and twenty-four chairs. h 92cm. Plate 133.

1980

TABLEMaple veneered with bird’s-eye maple; walnut inlay. w 90cm. 1980.

BEDSIDE TABLECherry with bird’s-eye maple. w 40cm.

COFFEE TABLESolid black walnut with satinwood. Diameter 80cm.

DINING CHAIRCherry with sycamore, upholstered in fabric. h 90cm. Plate 155.

DINING TABLEwith extending leaves Cherry and sycamore. Part of a dining set including a table, six chairs, sideboard and corner cupboard (see entries above and below and Plates 155–7). w 100cm closed; 200 cm extended. Plate 153.

SIDEBOARD Cherry and sycamore. Two cupboards with drawers and fitted compartments for cutlery. w 130cm.

CORNER CUPBOARDCherry with sycamore surround; glass display cabinet over a closed cupboard. h 200cm.

1981

CANTEEN Rosewood frame and legs with satinwood doors; interior fitted with drawers. h 130cm. Plate 46.

CEREMONIAL CHAIR Carved cherry with leather seat. Made for Milton Manor Chapel. h 90cm. Plates [58, 180]

CHEST OF DR AWERSFigured sycamore with black walnut legs, bronze handles made by Brian Glassar. Part of a bedroom set with a table and two bedside tables (see two entries below and Plates 43, 179). h 100cm. Plate 38.

1982

TABLE Figured sycamore with black walnut legs and inlay. w 90cm. Plate 43.

BEDSIDE TABLESycamore and black walnut. One of a pair, part of a bedroom set with chest of drawers and table (see two entries above and Plates 38, 43). w 50cm. Plate 179.

BOOKCASEMahogany structure veneered in macassar ebony, with gold-leaf mouldings, white holly shelves and back. h 220cm. Plate 66.

DRESSING TABLECherry and black walnut. w 90cm.

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1985

EASY CHAIR Oak surround with ebony inlay, upholstered in silk. h 80cm. Plate 81.

BOARDROOM TABLESycamore with grey veneer centre. One of eight, made as a set with fifty-two chairs (see entry below) for the British Insurance Brokers’ Association. w 120cm.

BOARDROOM CHAIRSycamore upholstered in grey leather. One of fifty-two made as a set with eight boardroom tables (see entry above) for the British Insurance Brokers’ Association. h 90cm.

DINING CHAIROak upholstered in red leather. One of eight made as a set with a table (see entry below). h 80cm.

TABLESolid oak. Part as a set with eight chairs (see entry above). w 180cm.

COFFEE TABLEOak with ebony. Made for Great Dixter. w 50cm.

HEXAGONAL TABLE WITH DESK Veneered in holly with black walnut inlay. Part of the table opens to expose a leather-topped writing area with book supports. Shown with one of a pair of armchairs (see entry below). h 73cm. Plates [50–1].

PAIR OF ARMCHAIRSSycamore with walnut. h 90cm. [Plate 51 with table; Plate 50 general room shot]

SOFA TABLESatinwood and walnut, with drop ends. w 120cm.

COFFEE TABLESatinwood and walnut, with extending top. w 70cm.

CABINET Front veneered in rippled ash, with olive, amboina and burr walnut top and sides. Made to house a television. w 150cm. Plate 95.

1986

DISPL AY CABINETYew and sycamore. h 200cm.

DINING CHAIRSycamore with walnut inlay. One-off made for Buckinghamshire County Museum, Aylesbury. h 90cm. Plate 27.

WALL MIRRORCherry, with bevelled mirrors. h 180cm.

SOFAFully upholstered with pink legs. Batch-production experiment for the mail-order catalogue, Idealogue. w 180cm.

COMMISSION FOR THE OFFICES OF SKYBRIDGE, LONDONincluding three marble-topped boardroom tables, two sideboards and twenty-four chairs (see entry above and Plate 133). Table w 120cm.

DESK AND ARMCHAIRSolid cherry with sycamore inlay. Desk w 120cm.

PAIR OF CHAIRSCherry and sycamore with enamelled inlay. One of the chairs is caned. Part of a bedroom suite. h 90cm. Plates 154–157.

CHEST OF DR AWERSCherry and sycamore with bespoke silver-Plated handles. Part of a bedroom suite (see entries above and below and Plates 155 –157). h 90cm. Plate 157.

BEDROOM COMMISSIONTwo bedside chests of drawers, a bed-head and a wall-mounted corner cupboard (1990) of cherry and sycamore. The commission also included a pair of chairs, a large chest of drawers, and a dressing mirror (see entries above and Plates 154–157). Plate 156.

DRESSING MIRRORCherry and figured sycamore. Part of the bedroom commission (see entries above and Plates 154–157). h 125cm. See Plate 156.

ARMCHAIRCarved from solid cherry. h 90cm.

TABLEYew and sycamore. w 80cm.

BOOK BOXMacassar ebony and box-wood. w 50cm.

CABINETVeneered in holly with black walnut inlay. w 150cm. Plate 52.

DINING CHAIRBlack walnut and sycamore. One of a pair made for a table (see entry below). h 75cm.

TABLEBlack walnut and sycamore. Part of a set with two chairs (see entry above). h 75cm.

BEDSIDE CABINETWalnut with figured sycamore and green enamel handles. h 70cm.

1 6 6 1 6 7

1988

TWO CHESTS OF DR AWERS Figured sycamore and cherry. One chest of drawers has an extendable mirror and small drawers for jewellery. Part of a set including bed (see entry below Plate 169). h 80cm.

BEDFigured sycamore and cherry. Features drawers under the frame and small retractable shelves. Part of a set including two chests of drawers. Plate 165 (general).

BOOKCASESycamore with coloured parts. h 200cm.

DRESSERSycamore with coloured parts. h 200cm.

PAIR OF GARDEN CHAIRSSolid oak. h 80cm.

DISPL AY CABINETYew and sycamore, glass-fronted. h 200cm.

JEWELLERY DR AWERSMacassar ebony and rosewood, with mirror. h 25cm.

JEWELLERY CABINETFigured sycamore veneered with diamond pattern, with silver fittings and inlay; enamel poppies by Jane Short. h 125cm.  Plate 160.

DRESSING MIRRORRosewood and sycamore. h 120cm.

ARMCHAIRLaminated and carved solid dark red Indian rosewood, upholstered in suede. h 100cm.  Plate 61.

ARMCHAIRLaminated and carved solid golden rippled satinwood, upholstered in suede. h 100cm.  Plate 59.

HALL SIDEBOARDVeneered as rock strata in macassar ebony with silver inlay. h 90cm.  Plate 96.

SOFAFigured ash and olive, upholstered in silk. w 160cm.

SOFAHolly with walnut inlay, upholstered in silk. w 160cm. See Plate 80 (general).

STOR AGE CABINET AND BOOKCASEMacassar ebony and sycamore. Included in the exhibition Black and White at the Contemporary Textile Gallery, Golden Square, London, in 1988, along with the next three entries. h 200cm.

BOOKCASE AND TABLEStained sycamore. Batch-production experiment for the mail-order catalogue, Idealogue. Bookcase h 180cm. Plate 135.

1987

JEWELLERY CASKETFigured sycamore with silver, rhodium-Plated fittings. h 35cm. Plate 53/158.

BOOK TABLESycamore and black walnut. w 160cm.

DINING CHAIRSLaminated ash with brown oak. Two of a set of six, including two armchairs, and an extending round table (see entry below and Plate 134). h 90cm. Plate 128.

DINING TABLELaminated ash with brown oak; extending top. Part of a set of six, including two armchairs (see entry above and Plate 128). h 90cm. Plate 134.

CHEST OF DR AWERSSolid sycamore with stained feet and handles. h 80cm.

CLOCKS Ebony and sycamore. One of six. w 14cm.

DINING TABLE AND FOUR CHAIRS Ash. Table diameter 110cm.

DINING TABLESycamore and ebony. w 240cm.

L ARGE CEREMONIAL CHAIROak with embroidered seat. One of a set of six for degree ceremonies at the Open University. h 120cm.

SMALL CEREMONIAL CHAIROak with embroidered seat. One of a set of twenty-four for degree ceremonies at the Open University. h 85cm.

TABLESolid hornbeam. h 45cm.

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TABLEOsage orange wood from the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, top and legs connected with figured sycamore. Donated to the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. h 90cm. Plate 75.

TABLEOsage orange wood from the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, top and legs connected with bronze castings. h 90cm.  Plate 76.

TABLESolid hornbeam with walnut. Diameter 110cm.

TABLECherry from the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, top and legs connected with figured sycamore. Bought for the Shipley Art Gallery, Gateshead. h 90cm. Plate 77.

1990

ARMCHAIRMexican rosewood upholstered in Alcantara. h 80cm.

JEWELLERY STANDSSolid ebony and silver. Set of five, made to display the jewellery of David Watkins and Wendy Ramshaw. h 110cm.

STOR AGE CABINET AND BOOKCASE Oak with bronze fittings. h 190cm.

DRESSING MIRROR Oak and ebony. h 120cm.

RECEPTION DESKFigured sycamore with macassar ebony. w 160cm.

RECEPTION TABLEFigured sycamore with macassar ebony. h 45cm.

HALL CHAIR Laminated ebony with figured sycamore. One-off. h 90cm.  Plate 31.

SMALL TABLEEbony and figured sycamore. h 75cm.

CABINETEbony and figured sycamore. Made to house a television. w 150cm.

SMALL TABLEYew and sycamore. h 75cm.

CABINETCherry and walnut. Built-in with fitted light. h 240cm.

JEWELLERY CABINETMacassar ebony and sycamore; silver enamel by Jane Short. h 80cm.

BUILT-IN BOOKCASES AND FIRE SURROUNDBookcases in ash, walnut, sycamore and olive; fire surround in marble. Set of five made for one room. h 220cm. Plate 79; see also Plate 80.

1989

CHEST OF DR AWERSSycamore veneered with macassar ebony, walnut, olive and ash. h 85cm. Plate 99; see also Plate 90 [general room shot].

BEDSIDE TABLESycamore, macassar ebony, walnut, olive and ash. h 45cm.

LILY TABLESycamore veneered with rosewood on sycamore with box-wood inlay. h 75cm.  Plate 116.

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CUFFLINK BOXEbony with silver inlay and silver handles. h 6cm.

JEWELLERY BOXAmboina and figured sycamore with silver; coloured enamel by Jane Short. h 25cm.

DINING CHAIRSycamore with walnut inlay. One of two, auctioned at Phillips, Oxford. h 90cm.  Plate 34.

MAPORIUMCherry and sycamore with hinged cabinet doors, designed to hold a map collection. w 100cm.

BOOKCASEMacassar ebony and sycamore. One of a pair (see entry below). h 210cm.

BOOKCASEMacassar ebony and sycamore. One of a pair (see entry above). h 210cm.

PAIR OF DISPL AY CABINETSBlack walnut and sycamore. h 130cm.

DINING CHAIRBlack walnut with sycamore. One of eight. h 90cm.  Plate 37.

ARMCHAIRLaminated and carved solid satinwood, upholstered in suede. h 90cm. Plate 60.

DINING TABLEStack birch laminations veneered with figured maple. w 120cm.

PAIR OF DESK CHAIRSCherry and sycamore from the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew. h 80cm.

1993

DINING TABLEOak with bronze brackets. w 180cm.

OBELISK CD MUSIC CABINETBird’s-eye maple with interior in red veneer. One of a pair (see entry below). h 180cm. Plate 168.

OBELISK CD MUSIC CABINETBird’s-eye maple with interior in blue veneer. One of a pair (see entry above). h 180cm.  Plate [168 shown closed].

1991

WRITING DESKOak. w 110cm.

LILY TABLERosewood with box-wood inlay. h 75cm.

LILY TABLERosewood with box-wood inlay. h 75cm.

JEWELLERY CASKETSycamore and rosewood, decorated with floral design singed into the wood. h 24cm.

MUSEUM CHAIRMaple. One of twenty-four made for Wolverhampton Art Gallery. h 80cm.

SLIDING SHOJI WITH R AIN DESIGNAsh with Japanese paper. h 220cm. See Plate 166.

WRITING DESK Ash, with sloping drawing surface and display board with built-in lighting. w 110cm. See Plate 166.

KNEELING STOOLAsh, with adjustable positions. w 40cm.

DINING CHAIRLaminated sycamore with American black walnut edges. One of six made for a dining-room suite including a round dining table, one sideboard and two cabinets (see entries below and Plates 125–127). h 90cm. Plate 120; see also Plate 114.

DINING TABLESolid and laminated figured sycamore, with American black walnut edges; table-top and legs connected with bronze panels and under-frame. Diameter 150cm. Plate 124; see also Plate 114.

1992

SIDEBOARDTwo cupboards and six fitted drawers, sycamore base and interior with exterior veneered with Indian laurel inlaid with sycamore lines. h 800cm.  Plate 125.

CABINETTwo cupboards with sliding doors, sycamore base and interior, with exterior veneered with Indian laurel inlaid with sycamore lines. h 900cm.  Plate 127; see also Plate 114.

CABINETTwo cupboards with doors, panels veneered with holly and walnut inlay, with the interior cupboard in rosewood. h 900cm.  Plate 126; see also Plate 114.

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WRITING DESKLaminated Mexican rosewood with satinwood inlay. Part of a set with armchair (see also entry below and Plate 100]). w 160cm.  Plate 100.

ARMCHAIRLaminated Mexican rosewood with satinwood inlay. Part of a set with writing desk (see entry above and Plate 100).w 160cm. See Plate 100.

BOOK TABLE Figured sycamore with rosewood rails. Made for Great Dixter. w 120cm. Plate 82.

1995

WRITING DESKFigured sycamore and black walnut, with drawer. Part of a set with armchair (see entry below and Plates 54, 62). w 110cm.

ARMCHAIR Laminated figured sycamore with black walnut, upholstered in suede. Made for a writing desk (see entry above). h 90cm.  Plates 54, [62 – side view].

PAIR OF BEDSIDE TABLESFigured sycamore with walnut. h 50cm.  Plate 45.

DINING TABLEAsh. Diameter 120cm.

WALL SCULPTURE WITH TIME CAPSULELaminated birch with inlaid coloured Perspex and glass display box; features a time capsule embedded in centre. Made for Ross-on-Wye hospital reception area. w 300cm.

DINING TABLESycamore and rosewood. Part of a dining set with table and chairs (Plates 30, 39), sideboard and console table (see next two entries and Plate 181). w 270cm.

CONSOLE TABLERosewood and sycamore; part of a dining set with table and chairs (Plates 30, 39), dining table, sideboard and armchairs (see entries above and below and Plate 178). w 120cm.

ARMCHAIRSycamore and rosewood. One of a pair; part of a dining set with table and chairs (Plates 30, 39), dining table, sideboard and console table (entries above and Plate 178). h 95cm.  

CANTAY BOARDROOM CHAIR Black walnut with sycamore. One of eight made for a round table (see entry below). h 90cm.  Plate 35.

CANTAY BOARDROOM TABLESolid figured sycamore with black walnut. Part of a set with eight chairs (see entry above and Plate 35). Diameter 180cm.

‘DANCING TABLE’Oak top on stained red legs. h 40cm.  Plate 17.

DINING CHAIRSycamore with walnut inlay, upholstered in suede. One of a set of twelve (ten in red suede and two in brown) made for a dining table at Great Dixter (see entry below and Plate 83). h 90cm. Plate 32.

DINING TABLE AND CHAIRSSycamore with walnut inlay. Part of a set with ten chairs (see entry above and Plate 32) for Great Dixter. Table L 260cm.  Plate 83.

HALL MIRRORCherry and sycamore. h 90cm.

DISPL AY STANDMacassar ebony. h 120cm.

HALL TABLEMacassar and figured sycamore. One of a pair. w 80cm.

1994

DINING CHAIRSycamore with walnut inlay. Part of a dining suite including twelve chairs, table (see entry below and Plate 86) and sideboard (see entries below and Plates 85–6). h 90cm. Plate 89.Armchair added 1996.

DINING TABLESycamore with walnut inlay. Part of a dining suite including twelve chairs, table and sideboard (see entries above and below and Plates 85, 89). w 200cm. Plate 86.

SIDEBOARDRio rosewood with sycamore inlay and interior. Part of a dining suite (see two entries above and Plates 86, 89). w 140cm. Plate 85.

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BOOKCASE AND CABINETMaple and pear with bronze handles. h 210cm.  Plate 170.

SIDEBOARD1995. Rosewood and sycamore, one of the additions to the dining suite made in 1997. w 260cm.  Plate 178.

1998

DESK CHAIRSawn bog oak and sycamore. Made for writing desk (see entry below). h 90cm.  Plate 101.

WRITING DESK Sawn bog oak and figured sycamore. One pillar of the desk contains drawers, the other a cupboard; both are on a turntable so that they can be moved to different positions. Part of a set with an armchair (see entry above). w 140cm.  Plate 101.

BANQUETING TABLE Laminated birch veneered with maple and stained. Made for the fiftieth anniversary of the Contemporary Applied Arts Gallery, London. w 600cm.  Plate 103.

SOFA TABLEBase veneered with figured ash, with a burr walnut top. h 80cm.

RECEPTION DESK Laminated birch veneered with ash and cherry wood and painted surfaces. Made for the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham. Diameter 400cm.  Plate 108.

CABINETSawn bog oak and sycamore. h 50cm.

BESPOKE KITCHENAsh and sycamore with sliding coloured plywood doors. Plate 167.

1999

RECEPTION DESK Laminated birch veneered with beech, ash, pear and coloured surfaces, with a lino worktop. Made for Milton Keynes Gallery. Plate 109 (see also Plate 19).

TITLE MISSINGOak and ash; Japanese paper stretched over wire frames. Made for Great Dixter. h 200cm.

1996

JEWELLERY CABINETRosewood and sycamore, with enamelwork in silver on handles; enamel birds on interior trays by Jane Short. h 125cm.  Plates 152, 162.

ARMCHAIRFigured sycamore and black walnut. Added to Dining Set 1994. h 90cm.

ROOM LIGHT AND WASTE-PAPER BASKETSycamore and rosewood. Japanese paper stretched over wire frames. Made for Great Dixter. Room light h 220cm; waste-paper basket h 50cm. See Plate 84 (room light).

ARMCHAIR Laminated ripple sycamore with seat veneered in burr redwood. h 90cm.  Plate 65.

PAIR OF TERR ACE BENCHESOak, for Harewood House, near Leeds, West Yorkshire.

BOOKCASEPear and sycamore. h 90cm.

DINING CHAIRRed oak from the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew. One-off. h 90cm.  Plates [36, 78].

LILY TABLERed oak. h 75cm. Plate [78 group shot].

BOOKCASERed oak from the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew. Sold with chair and lily table (see two entries above and Plates 36, 78) at Belsay Hall, Northumberland, by auction in 1999. h 200cm.  Plate [78 group shot].

1997

GL ASS TABLEEbony and bronze base with table-top in cast glass. h 70cm.

LILY TABLESycamore and black walnut. h 73cm.

PAIR OF CHESTSStack of small oak drawers in a carcass made of sawn bog oak cut through with sycamore. h 90cm.  Plate 137.

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DINING CHAIRFigured ash with a variety of laminated back slats in olive, bog oak and ash. One of a set of six, made for hexagonal dining table (see entry above and Plate 143). h 85cm.  Plate 142; 183 (detail of back).

INTERIOR DOORS WITH GL ASS PANELS Ash and laminated glass with oxides by Jane McDonald. h 200cm. Plate 147.

2001

RECEPTION DESK AND BARLaminated birch veneered with bog oak, glasswork by Jane McDonald. Made for the Stables Theatre, Wavendon, near Milton Keynes.  Plate 112.

BOOKCASEAsh with macassar ebony. h 220cm.

HALL TABLEAsh with macassar ebony; cast-glass mirror by Jane McDonald. w 110cm.

ROOM L AMPOak and ash with hand-made Japanese paper. h 180cm.

BOOKSHELVES AND DR AWERSAsh with coloured veneers. w 200cm.

CHEST WITH DR AWERS AND CUPBOARDSCombination of elm, bog oak, figured ash, and yew woods. h 150cm.  Plate 136; see also Plate 146 (detail).

2002

BOOKCASEElm with coloured veneers. h 145cm.

BATHROOM CABINETSawn bog oak and sycamore. h 50cm.

BOOK DISPL AY AND STOR AGEOlive, ash, black walnut and leather. w 100cm.

HALL CHAIRFigured sycamore and walnut. h 90cm.

2000

RECEPTION DESK Worktop veneered with cherry, with painted structure, glass by Jane McDonald backlit with led lights. Made for Norwich Castle Museum (see also entry below and Plate 111). w 400cm.  Plate 110.

INFORMATION DESK Worktop veneered with cherry, with painted structure, glass by Jane McDonald backlit with led lights. Made for Norwich Castle Museum (see also entry above and Plate 110). Diameter 600cm.  Plate 111.

JEWELLERY CABINETHolly and coloured veneers. The top opens to reveal a mirror, and the drawers slide open. There is a small cupboard at the bottom. h 90cm. Plate 169; in general room shot Plate 164.

ALTAR AND TWO PEWSLaminated birch veneered in maple. Made for Coventry Cathedral Chapel.

CHEST OF DR AWERSOpen frame made of black bean wood with sycamore drawers. h 100cm.

GARDEN BENCHOak. w 150cm.

PAIR OF STACKING TABLESHornbeam. h 40cm.

KITCHEN One long, fitted unit with built-in cooker, fridge and sink, and two freestanding cupboards. Worktops in English oak; doors and carcasses made from a combination of sawn bog and sawn limed ash. w 320cm. Plate 139; see also Plates [20, 141].

CUPBOARD Ash carcass with sawn bog oak front and English oak top. Includes two doors and six drawers. w 150cm.  Plate 139.

CORNER CUPBOARDSycamore and ash. h 210cm. One of a pair.

DISPL AY CABINET Figured sycamore with coloured veneer panels, glazed doors and built-in lighting. h 220cm.  Plate 171.

BED-HEADVeneered with bog oak with sycamore inlay. w 150cm.  Plate 145.

DINING TABLE Hexagonal figured ash top penetrated by twisting laminated legs. Part of a set with six dining chairs (see entry below and Plate 142). Diameter 130cm.  Plate 143.

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2005

BOOKCASEAsh and oak. w 220cm.

PAIR OF CABINETSSawn knotty oak with limed ash. One cabinet is designed to store a television, the other is for glasses. h 80cm.  Plate 102.

SMALL TABLEAsh and yew. One of a pair. h 40cm.

DOORVeneered with ash pierced through with solid cast glass. h 220cm.

DINING TABLESycamore and bog oak. Part of a set with ten dining chairs and sideboard (see entries below). Diameter 180cm.

DINING CHAIRLaminated in sycamore with backs in bog oak. One of ten, made for a round dining table (see entry above). h 80cm.

SIDEBOARDOak and bog oak. w 120cm.

2006

WRITING BUREAUColoured veneer exterior with sycamore interior. Opens to reveal desk, cupboards and drawers. h 100cm.  Plate 174.

BOOKCASESycamore and elm. h 220cm.

BOOKCASERed veneered sides with sycamore shelves and base. h 220cm.

STACKING TABLESAsh. One of four. h 45cm. Plate [166 general].

CABINETFigured sycamore and cherry. Built-in cupboard for storage and to house television. h 120cm.

2007

BOOKCASEBog oak and ash, wall-mounted. w 110cm.

CABINETLimed ash doors and carcass on a base of knotty oak. w 900cm.

GARDEN TABLE AND TWO BENCHES Oak and limestone. w 150cm.

2003

CABINETDoors veneered with holly, and bog oak top with olive wood interior. h 90cm.  Plate 149.

ARMCHAIRFigured ash and yew, upholstered in green silk. Part of a set with sofa and armchair (see entries below). h 80cm.

SOFAFigured ash and yew, upholstered in green silk. Part of set of three with two armchairs (see entries above and below). h 80cm. Plate 150.

ARMCHAIRFigured ash and yew, upholstered in green silk. Part of set of three with sofa and armchair (see entries above). h 90cm.

TABLELaminated birch with holly and bog oak veneer top. w 120cm.

THREE CABINETSSawn bog oak and sawn limed ash. h 80cm.  Plate 151.

2004

STOR AGE CABINETS Cherry and sycamore with coloured and exotic veneers. The piece is constructed in two halves that slide apart to expose a doorway. h 200cm.  Plate 172.

BUILT-IN BOOKSHELVES Sawn bog oak and ash. h 240cm. Plate 150.

TABLELaminated birch with coloured veneer, etched glass top. w 120cm.

WRITING DESKFigured sycamore and yew. h 73cm.part of a set with chairs for Great Dixter (see next entry).

CHAIRYew and sycamore. A pair. h 90cm. 2004 door.jpgGlass-panelled oak doorOak edged with cast-glass reeding. Made for Great Dixter. h 220cm.

TABLEFigured ash with stained red legs. w 120cm.

JEWELLERY CABINETCherry and figured sycamore, drawer handles with coloured glass inlay, drawers lined in suede; revolving trays pivoted on a bespoke steel spine at the front of the piece. h 75cm.  Plate 163.

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2009

SLIDING SHOJI WITH SUNRISE DESIGN Ash with Japanese paper. h 140cm.  Plate 185; see also Plate [173 general room shot].

MANTELPIECESycamore and walnut. h 100cm.

EASY CHAIRAsh frame upholstered in cream raw silk. h 80cm.

CHEST OF DR AWERSVeneered with burr redwood, ebony, Indian laurel, bog oak, and olive. Features fifteen drawers and a dressing mirror. w 150cm.  Plate 190.

2010

DINING CHAIRAmerican black walnut with figured ash edges. One of eight, part of a set with a round table and a display cabinet (see entries below and Plate 88). h 90cm.  Plate 87.

DINING TABLE Figured ash with American black walnut edges. Part of a set with eight chairs and a display cabinet (see entries above and below and Plate 87). Diameter 150cm. Plate 88.

DISPL AY CABINETAsh and burr walnut with the top section glazed and with built-in lighting. Part of a set with dining table and chairs (see entries above and Plates 87–8). h 200cm.

GL ASS TABLE-TOPLaminated rings, veneered with colour, supporting glass. w 90cm.

PAIR OF CHESTS OF DR AWERSStacking drawers in knotty oak and limed ash. h 80cm.

KITCHEN CABINETSSawn limed ash with marble work surfaces.

2011

WARDROBESawn limed oak doors, with coloured veneer surround concealing air conditioning and built-in lighting. w 350cm.  Plate 164; see also Plates 175 (detail), 175 (general).

ARMCHAIRAsh, upholstered in red fabric. h 80cm. Plate 166.

ARMCHAIRBlack walnut and ash, upholstered in green leather. h 80cm.

CABINETSycamore and walnut with coloured veneers. Features a desk and storage. h 220cm.

DRESSING TABLESycamore and yew. h 75cm.

2008

TABLE WITH STOR AGEAsh and red veneer, with storage in the top. h 35cm. Plate [173 general].

PAIR OF L AMPSAsh. h 120cm. Plate [173 general].

DISPL AY TABLEFigured sycamore and black walnut. w 120cm.

DINING CHAIRFigured ash and elm. One of six made for a dining table (see entry below). h 90cm. Plate 33.

DINING TABLEElm top with legs of figured ash. Part of a set with six chairs (see entry above). w 220cm.

TABLELaminated birch veneered with bog oak and ash. h 40cm.

HALL TABLEAsh and bog oak with cast-glass mirror. w 100cm.

SIDEBOARDKnotty oak carcass on brown oak legs with limed ash doors. w 120cm.

SIDEBOARDFigured sycamore and oak. w 120cm.

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TALL-BOY CHEST OF DR AWERSAlternating knotty oak and limed ash drawers. h 180cm. Plate 181.

2012

DESK AND ARMCHAIRAsh with red leather used on the two table drawers and chair seat; electrical fittings in well of desk top. w Desk 150cm.  Plate 21.

TABLESolid figured sycamore. h 40cm.

SOFASycamore frame upholstered in hand-dyed wild silk. One of a pair. w 150cm.

SOFA TABLE Figured sycamore and coloured veneers. w 150cm. Plate 182.

BOOKCASEFigured sycamore and coloured veneers. w 110cm.

SHOE CABINETSycamore and coloured veneers, with interior fitted with mirrors and lights. w 100cm.

2013

DRINKS CABINETBurr oak; top opens to reveal glasses and a pull-out surface for pouring drinks. h 120cm.

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MARY LA TROBE-BATEMAN is an expert on contemporary crafts. A graduate of the Royal College of Art she is former Director of CAA the leading gallery for contemporary applied arts in London; before that ran her own gallery in Somerset. As a writer, curator and lecturer she has introduced the work of the country’s most accomplished makers to a wider public. She has curated many major exhibitions: recently for The Goldsmiths Company in the City of London, and for the award winning Ruthin Craft Centre in North Wales. She is a Patron for Stroud International Textiles. In 2001 she was awarded an OBE for services to contemporary craft.

Rear endpaper

Back jacket flap

9 7 8 1 8 5 7 0 9 5 5 3 1

ISBN 978 1 85709 553 1

Distributed by Antique Collectors’ Club

Rupert Williamson is one of the foremost designer-craftsmen of furniture working today. In this extensively illustrated book, he surveys his work from 1962 up to date; his early education at High Wycombe College of Art and Technology and the Royal College of Art and the influences he absorbed, and dividing his work into the various themes or styles which have emerged, explains in detail how his work evolves – developing from sketches, model, CAD, or a combination of these; the choice of materials and the methods of construction. The fully illustrated catalogue of his entire work included here shows its extraordinary range. In all this gives a fascinating insight into the life and work of a furniture designer and maker of rare talent,supporting the view that his work bridges the division between crafts and art.

The Furniture ofRupert Williamson

DUVAL & HAMILTON Back jacket