Designs that Defy Time – Articles of Note

Sometimes there are classic designs that somehow defy time. This is of course an Arts and Crafts design I make in my classes. I just saw a beautiful chair design on the back of the latest Fine Woodworking magazine and it made me conscious of just how many designs have come about through the decades and centuries. We were talking about the simplicity of Sam Maloof’s design today in class and indeed the simplicity of making what is essentially a simple design that’s as simple to make as the design itself. Why is that? Well, the design replaces the use of traditional mortise and tenon joinery with all of the complexities surrounding compound angles it takes to make shouldered tenons corresponding to tapered front-to-back seats and places the seat-to-leg joinery on the side in a neat arrangement that recesses the seat into the leg and the leg into the seat. This virtually eliminates the limits normally associated with tradition and allows a more free-flowing shape that defies that tradition altogether to allow a free-form expression in three dimensional beauty and grace. John Cameron, the maker-designer, shadows the work of other designers (as we often do, perhaps most times unconsciously) to develop his own distinctive lines and presents us all with the challenge of creativity.
A classic design chair, good or bad, can stand the test of time with and without joinery

In the flea markets and car boots of the world there are thousands of chairs that retain the structure of the most used joint in the world. I see them wherever I travel with hide seats and woven seats, solid wooden seats carved to shapes corresponding to the human form and as flat as a pancake. They can indeed be monotonously dull and uninteresting until you consider their origins and the work that went into these complex pieces that somehow defy the impossible stresses and strains we expect them to withstand in the day to day of life. The point in all of this is to say that there are still  new designs that occasionally hit the streets from time to time that I predict may or may not be up there with Hepplewhite or Adams but will be recognisable as 20th century designs of note, with authors recognised for their awareness and distinctive approach to working wood.
I also thought another article worthy of note beside Jonathan Binzen’s above was Chuck Bender’s article on Wharton Esherick. Of course we can’t all travel to every venue supporting our inheritance of woodworking designers and so the articles are of real value to us. I thought that Chuck conveyed me right into the heart of this designer’s front room studio in the way he wrote the article. It was for me a lovely article and one I would like to keep and read over from time to time. Chuck is a working craftsman teacher and we shared a little time on the Woodworking Show’s circuit this past three months of winter. We chatted as he a carved a ball and claw foot one day and I will add some pictures when I find them. This article was in Popular Woodworking.