Cheltenham Furniture Show

Cheltenham is here again a show I have often been in. Foolishly, I would exhibit art which was always misread as furniture due to how the work was made.

Jez spoke of a lack of innovation, it isn't this that troubles me, essentially most who become designer makers are conservative by nature. Furniture making in wood is a deeply traditional proccess with a long history and this depth is what often attracts practitioners. At it's worst you see pieces desperately trying to be something new within tight parameters of materials, proportion and established aesthetics. These can end up as lumpen, distorted beasts, requestioning possibilities long rejected by earlier generations like square wheels. Whilst the truly innovative expands possibility, many don't have that sort of mind. Beauty and proportion take second seat to the cult of the individual.

I no longer know where the young makers are coming from. Many of the colleges from my day have closed the courses in design and craftsmanship combined. I believe those who seek to innovate are a different class to those in search of beauty or meening. Those developing from a trade background are likely to be more conservative in thier take on beauty. Cheltenham is the most traditional of all the shows.

My fear is not that I see little innovation but rather that I see little beauty. This new generation aren't looking outside of furniture for inspiration. Where Fred Baier looked to industrial machinery and computers for an aesthetic and John Makepeace to nature, the new lot  are looking to previous designer makers. This has led to a style of furniture. A homogenisation whereby, though it is difficult to recognise a maker by thier work, it is possible to buy a 'designer maker' table in Scotland much the same as one you could buy in Cornwall or Surrey.

Much of this has resulted from the makers of the 1970s and 80s getting teachng jobs in the colleges. RCA was the first to see the times were changing and Ron Arads change of staff triggered a new wave. This new wave has been replaced by a urther new wave. The designer maker movement happened two generations ago. My own work that uses furniture making techniques to make art has been misread more times than I care to recall. One piece I made had car park markings with a disabled sign, a no go cross hatch zone and double yellow lines that ran round the top and down one leg in boxwood inlay. I used a generic table form as a painter would use a rectangular frame to help the viewer see where the art began and reality ended, to avoid confusion. An old RCA lecturer dismissed the piece focusing on the form, we have moved beyond form and into narrative, the piece went clear over his head. Applying 1970s form and colour based rules to work about story, narrative and meening is like reading a book backwards, like criticizing Grayson Perry for making conventionally shaped pots and not looking at the surface decoration. His day had clearly gone and this is why he no longer has relevance as a lecturer at the RCA.

What is left of the movement is a handful of the old guard, desperately stumbling on and an ocean of mimics. The new will not be found in this field.

My position in the whole mess is one of chance. I was never interested in furniture or woodwork at school. I have always been an artist. This has surfaced in my drawing, my painting, writing and sculpture. By 21 I was sick of the dole, sick of artspeak so to get by trained as a joiner.  found myself more suited to bench work than site. This led to furniture which is my job. The good fortune of this was it gave me a pallet from which to paint ideas. My art now uses furniture making techniques, photography, writing. I remain uninterested in furniture, well no more than any other objects. The relationship is one of pure chance.

The designer maker is 99 times out of 100 from a posh or upper middle class background. The concept occurs as trade to the working class. I studied at 2 colleges, at the first one the course leader suggested we could easily start a buisness by working for family and freinds for 2 years, the other course leader stated that we may not all become stars but he could see us returning to our communities as village craftsmen. Thier middle class ignorance is sweet but no friend or family member of mine at the time, even if they were in work could afford this stuff.

So I say, shoot the lot of them.