I was recently approached to take part in a mixed exhibition at a craft gallery in the Midlands, they were initially asking from a 50% commission on any sales plus V.A.T. on the commission. This would have made a chair that we sell for £1,000 retail to the general public at £1,865.31! Sometimes it tough being a craftsman. You can however negotiate with these people which is what, I think, most furniture makers are compelled to do, otherwise the selling price of the object: is just unrealistic. There are gallerys like Riverside Mill in Bovey Tracey which is owned and run by the Devon Guild of Craftsman. This should mean that it is run for the benefit of the elective membership, however, they still charge a commission of 42.5% on the first £500 of any sale. There is then a sliding scale for sales above £500 reducing down to 25% if its a really big item.

Mixed Exhibitions are great fun. A few years ago, I was invited to take part in a quite large exhibition called "Contemporary British Furniture Makers", this threatened to be a wonderful gathering of the clans and a chance to meet a lot of old friends and exchange a bit of gossip. What I did not bargain for was the sheer scale of the exhibition. It seemed like everyone who ever made a bit of furniture in the British Isles were putting two or three examples into the exhibition rooms. When I arrived I was directed to my allotted place which was marked on the floor with a piece of paper with my reference on it. I duly set my furniture up and began watching what was going on around me. It was a wonderful exercise is people watching. First of all bits of paper were being moved around, furniture makers arrived found their allotted place not to their liking so decided to swap with some other poor devil who hadn't yet arrived. Later on, more work was set up, people were actually physically carrying other makers work around and replacing them with bits of their own. The organisers were going quietly bonkers as makers took up defensive positions and began nailing their own furniture to the floor. The other thing about mixed shows is that they can frequently lack any visual cohesion. There is a gallery I know in the Midlands that has quite extensive collection of many of Britain's top furniture makers. This should be a wonderful place almost worth a pilgrimag 5 but it isn't. The problem is that all these makers have very different styles, put them together in 2 or 3~ooms and you get a visual confusion that is quite unpleasant, how could it be otherwise, you have afterall to many egos screaming at one another within a confined space.

One of the joys of exhibiting is that it gives one an opportunity to see a piece of work in a new context. It can be a salutory lesson to take a cherished piece and put it in a public place along side the work of ones peers. All of a sudden something that has seemed to be good now looks rather ordinary. I do this all the time and its quite a humbling experience, the trick is to try and learn from it. The other joyful thing is meeting new friends and perhaps gain some incite as to how the general public reacts to ones work. Usually people

are too polite to say anything critical to your face but if you mill around a crowded private view you can overhear very interesting conversations. The other pleasure of exhibitions is meeting other woodworkers. You can always tell a woodworker at an exhibition because he's the chap that's grovelling around on his hands and knees looking at the underside of the table. He may evenapproach you as a member of the general public but will give himself awayby asking some damn silly question about finishes. The woodworker, and Iam very conscious that I am not writing about you dear reader, also gives himself away by the length of his thumb nail. There is, I am sad to say a vandal faction within the woodworker fraternity recognisable by the length of his thumb nail. This he uses to dig into the exhibition piece just to see how hard the timber is so leaving a little mark to let us know he has past this way. A kind of woody "kilroy was here".

I'm sure it isn't only woodworker~that cause damage to exhibition pieces but I know that there is a minority of you guys who are pretty destructive, I base this assumption on an experience I had a couple of year ago at a private view in the Midlands. I was opening a one man show at the Ferrers Gallery near Leicester. To mark the opening of the exhibition I agreed to give a slide presentation and talk on my work. That evening the gallery organiser was surprised how many people had turnd out she said "There's almost none of my regulars here, it looks like they are all Woodies". The opening was a success, the lecture and slide show was a success. The next morning when we came to check over the work we found multiple evidence of the application of the long thumb nail. Ladies and gentleman readers of this illustrious magazine can I ask you to kerb your curiosity and trim your thumb nails.

Exhibition pieces cost us a fortune to produce, they are produced to help generate new ideas and new business. We don't want to prevent you from opening drawers and touching surfaces that are meant to be touched. But unless you take more care in the way you handle our work that is what will happen. Fine furniture will become more and more divorced from real life. It will become an untouchable, unapproachable, beautifully lit object upon a plinth. Yet if we remove furniture from human contact we decrease its real value for without a human context furniture, fine or otherwise is valueless.

An Exhibition piece by David Savage The Linenfold Cabinet in Swiss Pearwood. Made in the workshops of David Savage Furnituremakers by trainee craftsman Robert Eusden 1994.

CRAFT OF CABINETMAKING NO 32 first published by David Savage in Woodworker magazine

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