Exhibition now running

My exhibition in Lyme Regis is now open. See the News and exhibitions page on this blog for details of location and opening.

Bank holiday diversions

"This week being sacred to holy things, and no public diversions allowed, there has been taken notice of even here, a little Treatise, called 'A Project for the Advancement of Religion: dedicated to the Countess of Berkeley.' The title was so uncommon, and promised so peculiar a way of thinking, that every man here has read it, and as many as have done so have approved it. It is written with the spirit of one who has seen the world enough to undervalue it with good breeding. The author must certainly be a man of wisdom, as well as piety, and have spent as much time in the exercise of both. The real causes of the decay of the interests of religion are set forth in a clear and lively manner, without unseasonable passions; and the whole air of the book, as to the language, the sentiments, and the reasonableness, show it was written by one whose virtue sits easy about him, and to whom vice is thoroughly contemptible. It was said by one of this company, alluding to that knowledge of the world the author seems to have, the man writes much like a gentleman, and goes to Heaven with a very good mien."

Richard Steele Tatler 20 April 1709

Aging and maturing

There are few sadder sights than some of the pieces of furniture in the study collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum: some of those modernist items from the early years of the last century, once so smart, bright and shining, new materials once so glowing, pure lines once so crisply defined, now faded, scuffed and dowdy.

Their aging has been so less gracious than the sturdy solid timber tables and chairs of past centuries, whose marks, distortions and patina add to rather than detract from their appearance and attraction: their meaning enhanced rather than declined. Yet it is not only the solid timber work that matures in this way, Even the sophisticated cabinet work of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which too (unlike the early English oak table) were once sharp, bright and crisp but where now the ravages of time, use and dehumidified atmosphere have warped surfaces and opened up cracks, look, with the well polished care of the years, as if they have acquired a bloom rather than lost it.

What is it that determines whether an artefact will be capable of maturing over the years rather than aging, and what is it in our modern aesthetic, our manner of making and our philosophy or productive work that has lost us the ability (sometimes) to express our creative impulse in things that will have a positive participation in history’s progression? And which pieces from the work of current furniture designer makers will fare well or badly in this respect?

Exhibition of my furniture in Lyme Regis

I am holding an exhibition of my furniture in the Town Mill Gallery in Lyme Regis, here in west Dorset. It opens this coming Saturday and runs until Wednesday 15 June.

The furniture exhibited will be drawn from thirty years of my work designing and making furniture to individual commission.

(For those who might want to know what I was doing before then, the answer is that I was working in academic publishing – and the really curious will be able to find a few fruits of my erstwhile labours on the shelves of one of the exhibits.)

Although some of the furniture in the exhibition will be for sale, and other items can be repeated (or modified) to order, virtually all of them were designed (or their originals were) for particular individuals – even if that individual was very occasionally myself – and for individual locations. They are therefore very varied in character and type, but they are not confined to their original application. Some of the designs have found more than one home already, although most do remain unique.

Some of the exhibits have been borrowed back for this event and visitors may observe a few marks of their history of use. My furniture is for use, though it also seeks to embody something that may be unexpected, yet right seeming.

Designing and making furniture to commission is a fusion of the intentions and creative impulses of several people. For the commissioner the experience should not be daunting, it should be pleasurable – but it cannot be predictable. You don’t have to know what you want. You do need to know what you want the thing to do for you, and where you might put it: function is important, even if, sometimes, the main function is just to look attractive. Furniture does, after all, furnish a room. But you don’t have to be able to visualise it as a piece of furniture, know what shape it should be, what wood it should be made of, although there is no reason why you should not discuss all that if you do have ideas, positive or negative.

I hope visitors will feel free to talk to me about the process and possibilities, even if they do not think they want to embark on it themselves.

For full details of opening times and of the location please go to the News and exhibitions page on this blog.

Metaphysical

"The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together; nature and art are ransacked for illustrations, comparisons, and allusions; their learning instructs, and their subtlety surprises; but the reader commonly thinks his improvement dearly bought and, though he sometimes admires, is seldom pleased.”

Dr. Samuel Johnson, Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, ‘Cowley’ (1781)

Justice delayed is justice denied

In the High Court in London the other day Mr Justice Tugendhat observed that “It is a further requirement of justice that the court should not make a finding adverse to a person in circumstances where that person has been given no warning of the case which is advanced against him or her.”

Was he rebuking the government over their application of anti-terrorist ‘control orders’ or whatever they are now termed?

No, he was commenting on tabloid newspapers’ recent attempt to have the privacy injunction on the former head of Royal Bank of Scotland lifted: "Sir Frederick Goodwin and the lady had had no opportunity to respond to the case in court."

My heading is usually attributed to William Ewart Gladstone, British Prime Minister and bane of Queen Victoria’s life, but this and other legal principles are equally honoured, in the breach if not the observance, in both this country and the United States:

"A sense of confidence in the courts is essential to maintain the fabric of ordered liberty for a free people and three things could destroy that confidence and do incalculable damage to society: that people come to believe that inefficiency and delay will drain even a just judgment of its value; that people who have long been exploited in the smaller transactions of daily life come to believe that courts cannot vindicate their legal rights from fraud and over-reaching; that people come to believe the law - in the larger sense - cannot fulfill its primary function to protect them and their families in their homes, at their work, and on the public streets." Burger, What's Wrong With the Courts: The Chief Justice Speaks Out, U.S. News & World Report (vol. 69, No. 8, Aug. 24, 1970)

Sir Fred, and all other anonymous citizens, may take comfort that they will be spared the law's delay, even if not the proud man's contumely.

Technological fix

A house in Vicksburg, Mississippi

In the southern English countryside in Hampshire on Saturday afternoon several members of the public contacted the police to report a tiger in a field. One had examined the beast through his camera zoom lens and concluded that it was threatening. A police officer confirmed the sighting. A team with tranquiliser darts was mobilised from the local zoo and dispatched in a helicopter, whilst the nearby golf course was cleared and preparations were made to close a motorway. Police on the ground found that the animal was not moving and cameras onboard the helicopter registered a lack of a heat source. Finally the tiger rolled over in the helicopter’s down draft revealing it to be a life-sized soft toy, of the kind that can be won at fun fairs.

‘It is understood that the tranquillizer dart was not used.’

‘The life-sized stuffed animal is being treated as lost property.’

‘Police continue to focus on more urgent matters.’