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Don Drapers poetic presentation of his ideas for the 'wheel' for slide projectors in Madmen series 1 was beautiful and slick. Who would have thought it was him who named the product. In the same episode, the office are discussing the Nixon versus Kennedy election making it 1960. To think this product, the slide carousel was still being used when I was lecturing until the late 90s. That's 40 years until cd projectors came in to common use. In 12 years since then this has been superseded, twice at least. The speed products become obsolete is getting faster. Cameron's government are set on reducing the benefit bill. The country needs to save some money. But the future of the planet, the future for our children should come first. I am. Ot sp sure that troubles aren't nearer than we think. Resources are being used up at phenomenal speed. A child of the fifties used a fraction of the material resources during their lives than a child of just a decade later. People now are consuming in gross quantities yet blindly breeding. They are oblivious to what is happening. Culturally, and the government are key in this, make the case that it matters not how much you use so long. You pay for it. The payer of the most tax is considered most virtuous. I would like to suggest a different way of looking at things. The most socially responsible is the least selfish. The one who saves most for future generations. Those who are prepared to not work, to consume minimal resources are most noble. If anyone reading this has fallen for the propaganda vilifying the poor, think again. Look up to those who volunteer not to work. What would we have them do? There is a reason we have high unemployment. We have most of what we need. Using diminishing resources to make product no one needs is foolish. Look up too to those who choose not to breed. The single greenest, least selfish act a human can do.

Where me meets meat

Some days, the knowledge that I am meat, that I am flesh, becomes too much to bare. The point where flesh and thought meet is a result of some extremely unlikely transmutation. I love the beauty of Darwin but, this is fantastically fortunate.

More Belief

So if I accept that belief comes first, for aesthetic reasons, and then comes the reasoning. The brighter you are the better you are at arguing the case for these beliefs it means that being clever just means you are more committed to your mis placed beliefs. On this thought I leave thinking behind to pursue a life of doing. I,ve thought myself in to a corner and escape knowing that the big beliefs I have, the big choices I make are made because I find them more beautiful than the other options

Belief

A common myth most of us intuitively accept is that there is a negative correlation between intelligence and belief, as intelligence goes up belief in superstition and magic goes down. This is not the case, especially as you move up the IQ spectrum. In professions in which everyone is above average intelligence , doctors, lawyers, engineers, there is no relationship with intelligence and success because at that level other variables come in to play that determine career outcomes, ambition, time allocation, social and networking skills, luck and so on. Similarly, when people encounter claims that they know little about intelligence is not a major factor in belief, with one exception, once people commit to a belief, the smarter they are the better they are at rationalising those beliefs. Thus, smart people believe wired things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for stupid reasons.

Course leaders post script

Rereading my earlier postings on suggestions from my college tutors reveals something in me as much as them. Whilst it may be true that social connections are the biggest factor to success as a furniture maker working to commission what is far more relevant to the number of makers from lower socio economic groups getting through is that few want to do it. It is outside of most peoples frame of reference. It would be a bit Billy Elliot. There is no conspiracy to keep people down, in fact I have usually been welcomed. It is that very few from my world would seek to do it. Just as few aristocrats make it in the graffiti scene or become successful grime rappers so too few black guys or working class Geordies choose to be polo players. The culture of the different classes are invisible or at least tricky for outsiders to understand. What is of interest and I will think further on is the aesthetic drive of the middle class designe r craftsman. The style has the tight perfectionism married to a need for individuate on. The working class makers are more comfortable to stand on the shoulders of history and make work within the design framework already established. Perhaps for fear of trade and due to the middle class need to define itself by desperation from the working class, the need is to confirm self through innovation. They would rather make a work unique to themselves and do it badly and ugly than conform to an established aesthetic. This is one key area where craft is separate from art. Craft is dependent for confirmation of its value on history. It has the support of it's family. Here it is necessary to point out that the middle class craftsman is separate from the working class craftsman who I generally refer to as tradesmen for clarity. The middle class designer maker combines the pristine conservatism with a wacky, obtuse styling. Rarely is it pulled off well. It can be argued that in all fields of creative self expression few pull it off. Half the battle, once you have grown beyond doing the work just for your own satisfaction, is deciding who you are trying to impress. Once you get beyond art therapy and take on the issue of communication you must desire who your audience are. On the council estate, if you want kudos for your aesthetic endeavour perhaps it would be your car you sculpt beyond reason. Take a proletarian vehicle such as a fiesta or escort, raise the rear axel, respray a proud colour, stick huge speakers in the back. Or, one trend I have seen of late at Christmas time is the displays of pulsating light that wrap around the houses up on the mount. Huge santas and rudolphs throb in glowing light. These competitive displays last for over a month each year. This is art. A further area of difference is irony. I often hear it said that it is the British use of irony that separates us from Americans. I believe this is a trait peculiar to the middle class. These aforementioned working class creative displays are straight up. They are done without post modern irony. They are of themselves. It is only the middle classes who pursue this desperate irony. Always scared they are not in on the joke. Always scared to say they like things. It always has to be a guilty pleasure, a cheesy love of culture. They never dare truly like something foe fear of seeming crass or uncool. This need for approval with the confirmation of a label that puts taste out of their hands. They will accommodate an ugly designer chair if the designer is considered cool. Or a Gucci bag because it is known leaving them no need to explain themselves. This is the problem with designer maker furniture. Antiques are beyond reproach having the validity of age. The product designer goods have the labels but our work requires a customer with the strength, with the security of their own social standing to take control and actually dare to choose themselves. This is brave. It leaves them open and vulnerable. With a country awash with interior designers ready to tell the time short what is cool it is hard for people to have the courage of their own taste. Respect all clients that do.

Other street people I have known

After moving to the south west I got to know many on the traveller scene. I had lived in a va n and a caravan back in my early twenties. Spending time in Kent at piglets wood and other sites where the convoy would go to pick fruit and prepare to invade Wiltshire like bands of medieval brigands. So it was walking and homely to meet up with similar types again. Times had changed. During Margaret thatchers time in office the government had waged war on the new age travellers and though the media spotlight moved on they were still persecuted. This had a dramatic effect. Those who chose to continue the lifestyle were a much hardier breed. The tern brew crew was coined when I was young. They were the troublesome mad types who would struggle to get a foothold anywhere else in society. Many suffering from what straight people would call mental illness and addiction. These were a peripheral minority when I was on the road but after the governments attack on alternative lifestyles became the majority. The groups and sites became far more tight knit. Less trustful of straights and outsiders. Having said that, once you were known they would look out fr you. There survival has always depended n keeping any strife internal, always avoid policeetc. It seems odd writing this ow as three I know well are about to go on trial for murder. I can,t write about this yet as they have still to be tried and anything I said may affect this. Some travellers would never beg. Of those who would each approached it in their own way and drew lines for themselves. One lad I knew from site I saw in town reading DOstoyevski with a hat in front of him. He would study the psychology of those passing by and their patterns and reasons for giving or ot doing. He always looked so young. Intelligent too. So why choose this way? It seemed to me he had fallen for fashion in a sense. Perhaps not an obvious one but he lived a myth of himself that may have had routes in literature, George Orwell, that sort of thing. Heroin gave him the reason to beg and a way to bare the cold. I don,t think he ever felt degraded as I would have. Two close friends of mine used to go begging in Bath and a daily b,of of their lives would make a good read. They were toughened heroin addicts. Never sought help from the NHS so in some ways their code was a pure one. They took it on the chin. A tough life too and usually a short one. I think life expectancy for street people is less than 50. They often die much younger. These two were always in good spirits, had interesting lives. Kim is a great painter. I have one of his works he gave me to look after. His technique is unusual and not like any other I have seen. K is amongst my best friends. Never as good a bigger as Jim. I don,t know why but he rarely earned half what Jim would. He never had an established pitch and perhaps has a less smiley face. He is more f an outdoors man. Often disappearing for weeks on end in to the woods. Catching rabbits, fish. Feeding himself and his dog from his surroundings. Society is just not set up to accommodate some of these people. Broken biscuits Jim once described them all as. Death is common and conversation will come round to who has died and where. Perhaps there was easier paths for them 20 or 30 years ago. Before plastic credit and debit cards excluded those on cash economies for many things. When driving licenses had no photos on. Before east Europeans took all farm labouring jobs. When, under thatcher we were so much worse off and subculture blossomed with music, theatre, art, clubs made by and for the unemployed without profit at there centre. When there was a free festival scene and new age travellers were many, before Glastonbury ate up there culture and fed it back to office workers wanting a crazy weekend before going home to their mortgages. I sometimes think the great days of British tramps are gone and the country is a less colourful place for their loss. Yet there will be someone out there now, raiding the bins behind M&S for food, huddled in blankets in a doorway or dancing in some field to music only they can hear. There are still free festivals. There are still many groups of travellers but they seem much more divided. One site, a year or two back grew and grew. Some were sending their kids to school. Living off whole foods and living low carbon impact lives . But across site was a ghetto of heroin addicts and alcoholics. Between we're all the layers you get in conventional society. These patterns form, these hierarchies seem to always form. I miss K. We would go off on adventures. When I had some mad scheme, lkie driving down to the Thames estuary and getting a boat to get across to shivering sands derelict wartime military defences, it would be K who would have the bottle and we would spur each other on. I have no other friend who, at the drop of a hat will come on some hair brained adventure. Right, I am inspired. I will ring him. I want to check out the oil refinery and pipelines behind Bristol. Let's go.

Turps and the Attraction of Dereliction

Turps was someone who I spent a fair bit of time with but never knew too well. I remember seeing him walk across our school playing field dressed in the rags of my tribe. He was a close friend of Paul, who I knew much better and interested me more. Paul was an artist, even back then. We both were and I saw connections and similarities that I could not find in Turps. When I left home and school I lived with Turps and others. He was a divisive person. Always looking to scape goat weaker people. We would join in. It tightened our gang bonds. These were special days. Our psychedelic honeymoon before things got darker and we all span off, hurled from the centrifuge. I spent a year in Cornwall and when I got back he had changed. Alcohol affected him far worse than anyone I had known. I grew up around alcohol. I knew what it did. It changed Turps in to a paranoid wreck. Where once his intelligence had been used for entertaining it now just hurt people. Being closer to others than me I saw his deterioration from a distance. He was deported from Amsterdam, along with other Brit tramps. He stayed a week or two with his parents before out staying his welcome. He spent his last month on the streets of Leeds. I heard from other street people that he was a face on the homeless scene. Finally he had a hit in st georges crypt, overdosing on heroin. He was an alcoholic. The two drugs don,t mix. Looking back now I find it hard to see how an intelligent lad from a stable, wealthier background than me should go down that route. There was volition to his descent. He was not just a stick in the stream. He was curious about street people and had a fascination wraith dereliction long before he found himself there. This and a very low tolerance to the psychoactive affects of alcohol. I went back to Weds some years back, to find his initials carved in a tree. The photograph is somewhere deep down at the start of this blog. Why he came back to me I cannot say. Maybe it came from the thoughts I had last year. Knowing that but for the grace of god it could be me out there. Melting in to the dirt of the city. When you walk past a tramp, filthy, hairy, lost in his own mind, begging for a drink, it may be someone you know well. A friend from school. The disguise is a good one. There was a period, under Thatcher, where the line between the homeless tramp and a youth fashion, some off shoot of punk, became very close. I recall traveller girls, from middle class homes, sitting with the tramps drinking cheap cider.

Not to Worry

College course leaders

I studied at both Shrewsbury and high Wycombe. Both course leaders were good men but blinded by their own life experience. The first suggested as a serious idea that to launch our businesses we could, for the first year or two, do work for family and friends. Coming from where I had I couldn't.t do a weeks work for family and friends making furniture. The value of furniture in my dads entire block of flats would not be much and none would be bespoke. I never seen a bespoke piece of furniture socially. My second course leader suggested that we may not all become successful designers but he could imagine us returning to our communities as village craftsmen. Now this reveals a beautiful rural, Oxfordshire, home counties idyll, nothing like the truth. Few working class people try to study furniture. Even fewer try to make a living from it. Mind you, if you are from a wealthier ho,e background you need not be much good, the connections through family will get you started. The game is rigged.

Looking at designer makers from the outside

I don,t suppose anyone thinks of themselves as a designer maker though no doubt some would see my work within that grouping I have always felt that I am some part artist some part joiner. Looking again at the work of others in that set today was odd. Having stepped away from it all for a while it now seems restrained, conservative and very uptight. A very middle class phenomena. Within the conformity and restraint the public schoolboys take off ties, loosen the collar and dance in clumsy, uncomfortable manner. I am from a different social background. My accent is different to theirs. How did I find myself amongst them? My aim is to continue away from their pack. To carry on making in a modest manner. The idea of doing furniture for me was to do something below eye focus. The idea of exhibiting furniture undermines this. It is trade in my hands and as such must stay modest. Apart from when I do art. Never confuse the two. To do so is to compromise.

On Doing Bad Things Well

Over the years the work of Philip K Dick has altered position within our culture. He wrote science fiction. A genre usually derided as trashy and formulaic. Yet within this literary back alley he created some of the greatest writing of the 1960s. Nowadays I often hear people who read no other sci fi claiming fan hood. Heavy metal. Looking at goths one can be fooled in to thinking they all dress badly. I am no great fan of tattoos. Yet within these obscure avenues of creativity and self expression there are odd people who do it really well. Comic books. Another much derided creative field has gems to be found. It is clear that it is not the genre you choose to show off in but how you do it. Colleges attract students on to courses through previous work carried out in that zone. Thinking art fab students apply thinking a cool subject will makek their work good. It is far better seeing a genius in an unusual field. Tattoos have gone from being rare beauty to something nearly everyone has and often similar choices. Yet within this the odd person does it really well. I think this is one reason I opted to do furniture. It seems dull. Mundane. I would never go straight to the furniture section in a library. In design you often see the obvious rendered poor. The steel, led lamp. Designer maker furniture is very much like this. When the first generation began they took the uncool field of woodwork and made it sing. Now, seeing a field of good wooden furniture students moved in making derivative work in response. It may take a big cultural shift for fresh work to follow. Fine craft as a whole maybe considered tasteful yet less and less is so. At the beginning it was ironic to find excitement and extreme beauty in woodwork. Now it is expected. I saw a boy racers car meet on the telly the other day. It was pointed out the displays were like sculpture. Within this odd field of creativity function was bent beyond all reason. These cars were never raced. They were to look at. A similar thing has happened to the designer makers. Cheltenham is a place to show off your furniture and look at other peoples. The name designer maker does not suggest a style but say what those involved do. It is about themselves presented to themselves. It is a self sealed loop of participants with little thought given to outsides or customers.

Round our way

Train Carriage

Sunrise

Finished Stuff

Englands Glory

Favourite three shots of the week.

Jeremy Broun- Furniture Today

Many reading this will be aware of Jeremy Broun, the celebrated furniture maker. Inducted in to the world of designer maker furniture, initially at Shrewsbury and later at High Wycombe it was the craft revivalists of the 1970s who were among my main inspirations. Back then during my education there were perhaps a couple of dozen names, each with a style of their own who headlined the movement. Jeremy Broun was one of best known of these and now, with designer makers numbering several hundred throughout Britain it seems appropriate that he should produce what must be the seminal record of the movement. Having been there from the start he is in a unique position to clarify and bring together the pivotal parts of a largely unsung and certainly under appreciated period of material culture.
The 3 DVD set 'Furniture Today' is finally complete and available from Jeremy who can be found through his website or through Thinking Hand Video Production, PO. Box 658, Bath, BA1 6ED.
It is a must, to be honest for anyone involved in education, design history or just having an interest in contemporary culture. Much of the work from this movement comes about through the private commission system and perhaps because of this is seldom seen by other than maker and client. Producing smaller decorative craftworks such as glass and ceramic artifacts is far less time consuming, transport far too less hence speculative work is rare. Seeing some of the work included is a real joy. There are a handfull of books that have come out over the years on the subject though these have never had the best work selected for inclusion. Most show a mixture from the best work to the worst. Being a renowned maker himself, Broun is able to recognise real quality where he sees it.
This timely document of a period of our culture comes out as many of the first wave are slowing down. Sadly   the death of Alan Peters brought this home to us all. I would encourage people to buy this rather than the books I mentioned if they are interested in an accurate history.

Outside the Studio

Stray Corners

Woodwork 16-06-2012