Following the Dream
In school at 14 a dream emerged slowly and took deep root. It wasn’t a nighttime dream, every day I looked, stared and listened out through the open window of the classroom in search of kestrels and skylarks high and then wagtails on the playground below. I loved the late spring when the warmer weather sloughed off the remains of England’s then colder winters. when the school windows were open fresh air flowed through. It was a time when the skies seem ever full and the air enlivened by bird song. The dream? It was my love for nature that opened my mid to working with nature’s bounty, wood. I decided then that I could become a furniture maker. Could my dream become a reality?
It took a long time coming. I never became one of those studio maker, or a bespoke designer thingy. I didn’t need to. I just arrived one day and there I was discovering myself in the dream of 30 years before. I didn’t copy anyone else, emulate others becauseInever met them, followed them and didn’t want to. I did see the lives of makers through the years that exemplified the heart of the maker and these were men I respected for the simplicity of their lives, they, like me, made a piece and sold a piece, made a piece and sold a piece. I realised then that the only thing I wanted was not fame and fortune but a lifestyle I felt settled to. I’ve arrived.
I’m never really sure of how a build will come out. Sketches reduce the risk of failure not because you have a drawing but because drawings make you think. In my apprentice time sketches came to the bench on a cigarette packet opened out flat. No plastic wrapped soft packs back then. Neat, white folded card stock. My tambour shoe tidy from oak came from my dreaming future career back in 1964. Not the tambour thing, the making things thing. But this week, working through the joinery, haunches and internal mitres, the balance between thick and thinner mortise walls and then strength too all came to reality in the zone.
The activity builds as I flit between tasks but it’s all coordinated as much as it ever can be. Composition is reflected in any piece you make, at least it should be. I let things less important slip a little for the sake of continuity in working, thinking, economy of time and such. My favourite time mid stream and at the end is cleaning and organising, but when I am on a roll, that’s when the juices flow in torrents, eddies funnels and rapids. You catch the wave and just ride.
I like making all of the pieces I make though you never see me really struggling and maybe even ditching the design altogether. That rarely happens but it could. This one came through for me as did the wine rack and a dozen others from 2019. The first two episodes or out already on woodworkingmasterclasses, com and the desk organiser part one is up on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHcW_kmzPrY too, so lots to sink your teeth into.
“I never became one of those studio maker, or a bespoke designer thingy. ”
How pejorative.
Give me a break, JIM
Sorry Jim, I did not mean to be offensive at all. I just never made it to that level or it, the title, can substitute for just being an ordinary bloke making ordinary furniture and things from wood.
Paul, I appreciate your take on making for the joy of the process and the beauty of a product that does exactly what it is designed to do with minimal artifice. It is that shakeresque approach that I think many of your readers and viewers appreciate and attempt to emulate, myself included.
As with much of the English language the understanding of word “bespoke” has changed a lot in your last 70 years and even my 40. Bespoke is literally defined as “made for a particular customer or user” So wether it is a suit from Saville row or a Jumper knitted by your Nan. It is bespoke.
I believe all the furniture we as makers (and aspiring craftspeople) design and adapt for our own use in home, workshop and even for gifts is bespoke.
So my suggestion to yourself and all the readers out there is, let’s reclaim the word bespoke. Don’t underestimate the thought and effort you have put in a product. Own the love and labour and earn the mantle of a maker of bespoke furniture.
What’s wrong with the simple custom-made as was, as in made for the customer?
“What’s wrong with the simple custom-made as was, as in made for the customer?”
I completely agree. Firstly I think it is a great lesson in semantics and secondly that we should all (including Jim) take “a break” before commenting and realise what we feel someone was implying and what we are inferring can be too very different things.
By the way Paul, this is the first time I’ve poked my head out of the bushes to comment on the blog. I must say I enjoy it immensely and find your articles and the comments in general to be a very positive and energising place to be.
At the risk of getting off topic, do you have any plans to do any task or classes over here in Ireland (Cork) anytime soon?
It wouldn’t take much to get me over to Ireland. It’s one of my favourite countries to be in. I gave a motivational talk at the Waterford Institute of Technology about 14 years ago on choosing your future as a considered vocational calling and not just doing what others might expect of you.
“Give me a break”. I’m not a man well versed in the use of our wonderful English language…..but I sometimes see those that think they are, accusing another person of being offensive by being offensive themselves. Jim please don’t be so pompous
Paul you have the ability to shrug off criticisms and not take offence ( or a gate)
For those like me having trouble following
From Merriam Websters:
“Definition of pejorative: a word or phrase that has negative connotations”
“the adjective bespoke, referring to clothes and other things that are ordered before they are made. You are most likely to encounter this adjective in British contexts,”
I love many British words and phrases (like Pub vs Bar, Boot vs Trunk) but bespoke isn’t one. Is bespoke used extensively?
I’m afraid so. It used to be just used in tailoring, mostly hand sewn men’s suits and such, but then between the 80s and today it caught on as way of defining custom work but it sounds, well, more pretentious maybe? In tailoring of the past it really denoted someone who would have been highly regarded as craftsman or woman tailor, someone who had really earned the reputation. Think more Say Sam Maloof in terms of long term ability in working wood. I came back to it when I returned to live in the UK after 23 years living in the US. Now everyone uses it if they are so-called ‘free-lance’ which again many if not most colleges and universities encourage former students to use when they leave college because again it sounds perhaps more distinctive than just self employed or less common if you see. It’s more a Brit-think thing where you have to read between the lines more.
A few of my favorite words:
Bespoke – pretentious (George Daniels and Roger Smith excluded)
Curated – see bespoke
Entrepreneur – I have another “me too” business that may or may not be providing enough income to allow me to move out of my parents house.
Maker – somehow seen as more acceptable than craftsman.
Side gig – I graduated college but couldn’t get a job.
It is unfortunate that we must dig so deeply through job applicants to find the truth is often not what is written in a CV application. Self employed can often be unemployed and thereby a person with no experience after leaving college. I noticed these past few years that no one uses the term self-employed on their CVs but always use the term ‘freelance’ as though they are some kind of investigative journalist. I do understand that they might well work freelance for someone but that is not really what they mean when you sit down and talk to them. It’s hard when you just spent £30,000 of not-your-own-money money to buy training and put a positive spin on your being unable to gain employment in what three years was supposed to equip you for. Think positive is not really the way forward though nowadays people use it all the time. So many new ways you are advised to promote yourself in an application, but no one uses terms like use humility, listen, take your time to give open and honest answers, explain yourself clearly. It’s a strange thing, my looking into education and educators, talking to them wherever I can, to see even in colleges teaching crafts and trades how few actually ever practiced their craft for very long at all.
Dan, you missed one:
Influencer.
And another to your list…Consultant – See Freelance, Entrepreneur and Side Gig for definition.
Hello Paul, and a happy new year to you and the team. Looking at the accompanying photographs on the blog, is that a tambour front I espy? They have long fascinated me, and I love the old desks that were made with such. I’d love to own one but they command high prices.
Would it be possible that such a feature could be incorporated in one of the furniture projects you have planned for the house? I’d dearly love to have your tutelage on these doors.
Your remarks about designing remind me of my justification for spending, sometimes, days on plans, when I really want to be in the workshop getting on with it:
“If you can’t build it on paper [or on the screen, these days] you surely can’t build it in reality.”
(p.s. I hope Jim received his ‘break’. It sounds as if he needs one.)
Hello Paul,
This isn’t directly related but the original thread is closed.
Do you have a You Tube video link on the metal wire shelf supports from 2014 – I think I’ve got it from the blog but you mentioned an on line description.
We used it to build bookcases in video work for woodworkingmasterclasses.com
Just a note of thanks for the work you do and the way you present it.
Keep up the great work – it makes a difference!!