CRAFT OF CABINET MAKING

ARTICLE ? 35

HIGH CHAIR

One of the curious things about making Bespoke furniture is that one usually benefits from marketing done this year in two to three years years time. Consequently when my Bideford workshops closed last year I was in the fortunate position of continuing to benefit from the marketing and sales promotion that I had done the previous year. I must say that rather to my surprise I found myself with firm orders for furniture and a growing order book but with no workshop or skilled cabinet makers to carry out the work. At least that's what I thought until I began asking round and found myself with four beautifully equipped workshops staffed by people that I had trained in previous years and all within a few miles of where I live. Now there's a lesson in this somewhere but here I was with more work that I can shake a stick at and tiny overheads and here they were with three or four week lead times and huge overheads. Perhaps I'm dense or something but why didn't I do this years ago. I suppose the answer to that is that I am a creative sole who enjoys making things so sitting at my drawing board and computer in what could only be described as a small but perfectly formed studio is not entirely satisfying. Sooner or later the instinct to go out into the workshop and not just potter about but actually make something, will sooner or later get the better of me. My poor old workbench, which has been sitting in the garage gathering dust for the past few months will, I hope, pretty soon be put to good use as hopefully within the next few weeks I shall be moving into a new workshop. I know it's madness, I know if I were sensible I'd sit quietly in my small but perfectly formed studio and just do the business, but something inside a cabinet maker has to be fiddling about with wood. It is the most ridiculous - and for a family man with responsibilities - quite inexcusable folly, but I can't help it. Anyway more of my inexcusable folly next month when hopefully we will have cleared our one remaining hurdle in the

planning department and work will have begun to provide DBS with a brand new workshop overlooking some of the most spectacular Devon countryside in existence. No more scruffy Bideford back streets for me, these are hills to make the heart sing and the pulse pound with excitement. But more of that next month - planners permitting.

This month I'll tell you about a chair. A few month ago I was approached by an American lady who had been referred to me by an old client. She told me that she and her husband had recently arrived in London, settling in one of those rather grand Eiderdown villas just to the back of Kensington High Street and that they had bought with them a pool table that they were planning on using as a dining table and could I help them. So I duly toddled up to London to see the offending table to be met by the most extraordinary spectacle. This wasn't just a pool table, this was the most elaborately decorated, gloriously decorated, marquetry covered oak pool table in existence. The background of the table wasn't just Oak but Burr Oak veneers, the marquetry inlays were Rosewood and American Ash. And the marquetry was just superb, considering that the work had been done probably around 1890 in New York, the standard of craftsmanship was quite exceptional. My client had already had a veneered table top made for the table, unfortunately not to the same quality as the pool table. My heart sank a little there, but what they didn't have was a dozen dining chairs to go round the beast. Now we discovered was the surface of the dining table when in use was 4 inches higher than the height of a conventional dining table so if they used the table as proposed a set of chairs would have to be commissioned. So their brief to me is to design a chair that complemented this gothic masterpiece yet didn't look as those it needed a pair of step ladders to climb on to it. As is my usual practice I produced two designs for my clients approval and the favoured design - both my me and by the client was one with a gothic back. I arrived at the gothic shape quite early by picking up the detail that was echoed in the marquetry around the skirt of the billiard table. This enabled

me use a central back support that could be laminated to give good lower back support and reasonable comfort. I was concerned about comfort because I felt having to climb up onto these especially high chairs would always make them slightly awkward. The height of the seat was dealt with by adding a foot rail four inches above the ground between the two front legs. This unfortunately makes the chair slightly awkward to get into and get out of, but it was unavoidable for without a foot rest many shorter people would have been left with their legs dangling in mid air. This may sound amusing but can be extremely uncomfortable as if one is sifting in a chair like this for 1 or 2 hours the pressure behind the knee can cut off the circulation to the lower leg causing considerable discomfort. My original design just showed marquetry to the front rail of the chair. I placed the marquetry here as I felt that in general use the chairs would be placed around the walls of the billiard room and in this position the marquetry would be best appreciated. However, my clients had other ideas. Once they saw the design immediately we got round to putting marquetry here there and everywhere. In the end we settled for a similar motif on the back rail and a floral design to echo the floral design in the billiard table on the back spat. My clients argument was that if they were going to do the job they might as well do the job properly and when the chairs were around the table the back would be more visible than the front and in these situations the client is invariably right. So back I went to Devon to produce the prototype.

Now I call it a prototype because that's the usual term for the first chair of a batch. But what we were making really was a one off chair for the clients approval which if successful would form a part of what would finally emerge as a batch of 10. But anyone knows that making chairs is a slightly hit or miss affair. It is important not to go too far with chair making until you have sat in something full size and the prudent chair maker will make a workshop full size mock-up which probably the client never sees. This can be held together with screws, bits of string, tape, anything that does the job. The objective of the first mock up is to test the comfort of

the proposed chair and to debug the design before it gets too far down the line. So we are making a workshop mock up and then a one off chair for the clients approval. Followed by a batch of however many. This is a prudent and careful approach to Bespoke chair making for no chair maker, even the most experienced would go into a batch of new chairs without having sat in one of them. Making one uncomfortable chair is forgivable - making 10 is totally unforgivable.

My new sub-contracting system came into operation now and three workshops tendered for the job. In the event the job was awarded to Jeff Smith and Rosvita ? of Creations in Wood. Both Jeff and Rosvita are graduates of Bucks College and Jeff had worked with me for a couple of years when they first came down to Devon. What tipped the scales in favour of their operation, was the fact that they had working with them a craftsman called Tim Cook who had trained not at Farnham College which wouldn't have particularly impressed me but instead had served an apprenticeship with the John Makepiece Workshop. Now anyone who can survive 5 years in that workshop is going to find his way around a dining chair. I must admit I flinch and go white when Farnham people suggest that joints in furniture should be held together with bits of threaded rod and epoxy glue. It may well be a ‘very strong joint' but I don't really want it in my furniture thank you very much. Although I am quite prepared to surf the Internet and do the most modern of things for a man of my advanced years, I draw the line when it comes to cabinet making. So long as I have got a its all a question of integrity. For me the piece should be the same the whole way through. Rather like a stick of Blackpool rock, the writing should go right through the middle and some poor restorer fiddling around with one of my chairs in the next century shouldn't come across a surprising piece of metal in the middle of a David Savage chair. But enough of that! Tim Cook despite his ponchance for steel dowels and epoxy is still a very fine craftsman and proceeded not only to make a very fine prototype chair but also to interpret my designs with great sensitively and flair. I enjoy working with craftsmen

that have an eye. It makes the whole process of turning a scruffy drawing into reality, so much easier. Mind you we did have out moments.

One of the great technical challenges of making this chair is the construction of the rear leg. While I make suggestions as to how craftsmen should go about their work I hope I have the wisdom not to insist they pay any attention to me because by and large I found that the person faced with the problem of making one of my pieces usually has a pretty good reason for going about it the way that they do. However in this instance I thought rather carefully about how these chairs back legs were going to be made. For I realised that they were going to be a little tricky. Firstly there is the curve to create the gothic arch at the top of the chair and then there is the curve at the base of the leg to kick out in a totally different plane to the gothic arch. So these legs have to be curved in two directions at the same time. Something that Farnham people do while brushing their teeth in the morning. I had my heart set on the back legs being made using 2 ml thick Oak constructional veneers, sequential veneers would be used to keep the integrity of the gain pattern, the surfaces of the veneers could be scraped smooth of any knife cuts to give an invisible glue line and reasonably wide veneers would give enough timber to admittedly wastefully, give the kick out to the lower leg. What I had neglected to remember was that the Creations in Wood had every piece of equipment under the sun but it didn't have a veneer press. When we were talking the job over before work began there was dark mutterings about creating a joint in the back leg which in my usual insensitive manner I had brushed aside and kindly pointed them in the direction of constructional veneers. A full sized ? was produced and drawings produced and there was that blasted joint on the chair back leg. Mutter, mutter, mutter, grumble, grumble, grumble. Alright lets do it but make the joint a damn sight longer. This was pure aesthetic whimsy on my part for the finger point and Jim was proposing was probably 10 times stronger than the wood itself. I throw another wobbly when I saw the prototype for the first time. The thing was held

together with a band clamp around the chair frame. When I peeped beneath the band I found that bloody joint had only gone as far as the original drawing and not as far as Sir had instructed. After a certain amount of arm waving and flapping about, I calmed down, got out of their way and let them get on with it.

The marquetry also gave me a few heart stopping moments. I had initially thought to cut the marquetry using a traditional donkey for the floral pattern of the back splat and possibly template and mitre cutting for the geometric pattern on the front and rear chair rail but when we came down to costing the job out it was far more cost effective to use modern technology and get the marquetry cut out by lazer. The benefit of doing the job this was is that the image produced is much closer to my original drawing than could be achieve by even the most skilful marquetrian using a knife or a saw. I do a bit of marquetry and I have cut some marquetry pads in my time and I know what a strain it is on the eyes to follow a design with a very find saw blade. It's alright if it's your design for you can slightly compensate and keep the character of the line even with a saw. But if it's someone else sawing out your design that is when the disappointments happen. It's usually something that can't be pinned down. There's nothing technically wrong with it's just not quite sawn the way it was drawn. With lazer marquetry this problem is totally eliminated. What is also eliminated is a whole area of hand work but that's a different issue entirely.

I sent my designs to Richard Dyson at Lazercraft in Huntingdon in Cambridgeshire, near Cambridge. Richard is a genial Yorkshireman who promised me the earth and then promptly disappeared on holiday leaving his staff to pick up the pieces. The problem apparently was that Richard had programmed the computer to drive the lazer but had neglected to tell the operators quite what it was they were making. The other challenge that Lazercraft had to overcome was that my designs were too long to fit within the bed of their smaller machine. They do have a larger machine that's capable of burning its way through battleship armour but I wanted my

marquetry cut out with their dinky little delicate lazer, that burnt away a curve no thicker than a human hair. Well the marquetry came back with bits locked off either end which Jim promptly stuck back on again using a wonderful?

dodge using a piece of thin aluminium litho plate scored with a knife to provide perfectly matching male and female razer? templates. Anybody who has tried to cut in a wavy shape into another wavy shape will immediately see the benefits of this guidance system. For the cut out piece of thin aluminium litho plate is quickly double sided onto a bit of hard board or thin MPF to enable a router template ring to bear against it and create the female form. The other piece that fits inside it is created using the other piece of litho plate. The knife cut wasted nothing it had no curve therefore the fit should be perfect. As indeed it was.