These times were good. My weekends home were wonderful. I was drug free bar subutex which one grows to forget. But gradually it changes you. It's relative effect when converting from heroin meens a clearer head, uplifted feeling. As if opiates are gone from your life. Only when you find yourself without are you reminded you are still an addict.
Magnus bought a house in frome. We had to move workshops and I couldn't explain how dangerous for me a return to frome might be. He found a shed close to his house which we restored. I moved in with Claire.
Further orders from Rupert for his Manor House in Shropshire found me working with an interior designer so opposite in ethic and taste to me. From here life went downhill. I made four or five four poster beds in mahogany, a timber I had sworn not to use. Drawings would be dismissed as interiors books and magazines of stately conventional country mish mash were pushed on me. My own work had all but gone and now I was making work that I was ashamed of. After some friction I began working with malcolm. Rupert had bought a yacht and a beach side cottage in Porlock weir to renovate and stay in. This first house in Exmoor I had design freedom. Whilst not what I would ideally make I was left to design to please the clients with no pressure from this interiors woman.
Soon Rupert bought another house which malcolm restored. His style is an odd one. A little tim stead but aligned to unrestrained use of multiple timbers. After the mahogany four posters friction it was decided malcolm would send ne sketch ideas. My ego further hurt I redrew some dignity in to his sketches. Some pieces were successfully salvaged from the original ideas.
I had become freinds with some travelkers and developed a benzo habit. Most crackheads balance the hee bee gee bees one gets from crack with heroin. Determined never to succumb to brown I foolishly took benzos never realising these are as bad, if not worse than heroin. More murders are committed on this drug than any other. Withdrawall can take two years. Indeed, the people I got mine from, whilst softening off heroin habit withdrawall using drink and benzos had a fight. I'll not give details but all three got 17, 15 and 12 year sentences for murder under joint enterprise, a law normally used when gang murder happens and those involved go silent to police questioning. Only one person killed Lenny after his machete rampage. Someone had to stop him. Perhaps there were moments when police ar ambulance calls could have been made but being outlaw they all bare some responsibility, even if just for disposing of the body.
Making others designs hurt my dignity and my crack use rose until suicidal thoughts saw me drive to my brothers where I gave up crack. Here I wrote the auto biographical ' How did I get here?' Pieces found on this blog. 2012, somewhere round there. After this I began my benzo with drawl easily the worst experience of my life. I couldn't work for months. I guessed three would see me well and agreed to work on the Cutty sark. Still very unwell it would be a further three months before I receieved an email from Rupert, a cheque and began the completion of this bedroom furniture.
For two years I was clean. Not since nineteen had I been free of all drugs and drink. This period was great. I mastered my feelings of ego in making designs based on Malcolm's sketches making two double beds, two four single beds, several dressing tables, several chests of drawers, many bedside units and vanity units and a set of bunks that turned out ok. From sketches I had somehow produced a top floor of furniture to draw some order to the designs of malcolm. He is a lovely man but design is not something the untrained can successfully do. There is a belief, misguided, that anyone can design furniture. I compare it to saying anyone cab design a motorbike. I could draw one but my understanding of the pipes and forms would be an aesthetic jumble because to design a motorbike you need to understand engineering, this helps form the design. Furniture is much the same. Until you know why things are as such, all you design is pictures. It is a little insulting to be presented with sketches to steer designs but I did it but a growing anger, reduced by my clean life, still rumbled inmy subconscious. A guilt at not making what I ought to be.
Once completed I made the final work I did for Rupert. After the benzo withdrawal I had sworn not to return to furniture.
Rupert bought a new london home in Chelsea. It was for here I designed my best work for him. I designed technically difficult details to reference details in the house. The maple office took a lot of time and I grew a debt from which I could se no end. Losing my love of furniture as its drift from my original manifesto to creating another mans dream home had a profound effect on my dignity. Hours I spent making became less. The office was a success. A compromise of what I could impose of my aesthetic sensibility into another's tastes. Laminated cross glazing brs. You can find pictures on this blog.
I built a fire surround and an arts and crafts bookcase of some quality. Then began what was to be my best price and final piece for Rupert. An elliptical desk in maple. I refused compromise. Kept to style but technically refused more lucrative standards to create a piece with cylindrical legs, vacuum lam inyet panels bête ww the six legs, inlaid into the veneer with stringing lines. The elliptical top is to have a carved detail
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