Certainty scares me as all lies do. Bewilderment,

Certainty scares me as all lies do. Bewilderment, insecurity, faithless in my own beliefs. Suspicion that any sense of purpose I enjoy is a passing delusion. Faith, in anything, has always been beyond me. Life is a series of revealed truths, certainties that once in bloom excite and intoxicate the senses before falling slowly, inevitably into decay. Political ideologies flare in momentary theoretical wonder before failing as reality mocks their deceit. My mind can't be alone in alighting on pattern and forming order from chaos. It is our nature to try make sense of all this. That which is utterly senseless. The young, equipped with neuroplasticity leap from position to viewpoint with the lack of guilt, pride or shame of frogs. As we age, our models of understanding inevitably crumble as information changes everything yet the tiring brain grows progressively more rigid. Senility sets in as the world that sculpted the man alters beyond his understanding. The young mind excites in revelation as opinion alters. That joy in being wrong and the ecstasy of being proved so is a mystical pleasure. Self is lost as the foundations shift underfoot. Preserving that joy in the new is the priority of the middle aged and beyond. The security of a fixed self becomes a madness and mistaken strategy for survival. In a reality of endless change, truths are passing whirlpools, flowers that grow, bloom, peak and wither. The drowning man clutches for handholds he knew were there but his grasp meets thin air. The world becomes disconcerting as all he knew, all he studied drifts off into irrelevance, comical embarrassment and finally to cultural idiosyncrasy. Amusing curios providing maps, keys to understand how our forefathers saw the world.
Recalling my life is a series of discoveries that when fresh appear wonderful. From psychonaut, to artist, to joiner, to furniture maker, to designer, to lecturer each seems innocent pure even good for a while. I see others around me convinced by others around them never questioning or developing a critical thinking in their progress. Always assuming if Mr jones says it's right it must be. In parallel my suspicion grows as aspects become apparent as I explore that aren't pure. Once the practice is understood I either have the choice to carry on knowing it is no good or at least flawed or abandoning it and pointing out the flaws. Most construct arguments to justify their actions. Joiners together, teachers together, designers together are doomed to construct narratives of self supportive justification. Any group left alone without outsider critique are free to grow obsessive and perverse. Online forums where minorities that would number but an isolated few in every town through digital inter connectivity can join together. Those four perverts in every town can form an online discussion board where their irregular outlook, their perversity of desire can find support. Desires that in ore digital days might be nipped in the bud now find a breeding ground, a primordial soup of nutrients from which to grow. Moral dysfunction grows unchecked.
Few are sufficiently confident to diverge from the consensus. From here radicalisation in all fields of human activity is able to grow unchecked.

From here, the largely unpopular designer maker furniture has found approval. During a brief window in the seventies early eighties, a movement of some thirty makers brought craft into fashion within contemporary furniture design. A craft revival across all media was taking place that echoes down time to the present day. The marriage of design and making into a singular process lent itself better to glass and ceramics where process remains integral to design trends. Furniture more easily splits in to separation of design and making. As fine craft furniture makers became known they took on makers and craft returned to the sidelines. The makers once more became irrelevant, a system similar to architecture and a phenomena that has increasingly crept into a certain category of fine art. Much like architects and furniture designers, artists such as Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst employ teams of skilled workers to create their ideas.
As the spotlight of fashion moved away from the designer maker craftsmanship orientated furniture and onto other production models the desire to make contemporary hand made furniture never went away. Some of the better designers were able to find markets. Through group exhibitions, the first generation finding teaching posts in universities and a steady flow of young people, largely but not entirely white males, a category of furniture continued to evolve outside of the mainstream. Value systems and aesthetic conventions developed within the sealed college bubbles. Online forums allowed these stylistic and moral beliefs to compound. This introversion and mutual affirmation of the styles and qualities created an isolated offshoot in the tree of furniture history that enjoys a popularity away from mainstream fashion sufficient to support several hundred businesses, many partly dependent on other interior joinery or fitted kitchen work. The model of operation is much the same as cabinet and furniture making workshops before modernism and the development of industrial manufacture. Perhaps it's greatest quality is the craftsmanship as quality and finish are valued over design. Within this bubble experimental innovation exists within the conservative values of craftsmanship. At its worst, well made but clumsy pieces slip through. At its best as much consideration goes into design. Group exhibitions such as the annual Cheltenham show present a disorientating display of unrelated aesthetic visions. Curated exhibitions of complimentary objects are rare but succeed in presenting a coherence group shows never do. Any bespoke production process dictates a cost exclusive product. Due to this, designer maker furniture, like bespoke tailoring, is of no interest to the vast majority of the population. Consequently the work has no impact or influence on the general look of the day, the look of the world continues to evolve through the vision of less exclusively minded individuals. Contemporary fine art, with its big free exhibitions continues to exert a greater influence though less so than at the turn of the millennium where the aesthetic sensibilities of Damien Hirst and Tracy Emin affected everything from shop fitting displays to wallpaper to packaging.
Meanwhile, in mainstream design, the furniture pieces finding exposure through design magazines, the design council, the crafts council, private and public London exhibitions and other windows that combine to deliver the zeitgeist, have once again embraced wood. All cultures go through innovative and conservative periods. Furniture has reflected this trend as sixties and seventies saw a widening of possibility in design, lasting in to the eighties where creative salvage exponents Ron Arad and Tom Dixon began before exploring further avenues. Reflective of the austerity policies advanced by both major political parties current furniture shows less diversity and experimentation than was explored in the seventies. An inward looking generation of designers have developed a style of simplicity. The determination to leave no angles of criticism and a sideways awareness of each other's work has left a period of polite and quiet modesty. The furniture of today sits quietly. Stylistically most easily comparable to Scandinavian design.


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