Design Language – Student Conversations

A design language. It's not a theory, right? I think too many people, when they come to learning design, look for theories, like the Fibonacci series or the Golden Mean, theories which you can apply to what you want to make.

That's not what I mean at all. Because what we're dealing with is a three dimensional object, or three dimensional objects. So whatever the language is, it's going to show up as an object. So therefore, the language has to be expressed in terms of the particulars of the object. So what you're looking at are shapes or textures or surfaces or lines or forms that make up some finished object. When people start designing, you can't just pull something out of the ether and boom, there it is. You have to have something to build with, and that comes from a number of places.

One is the things you've seen. So all the photographic stuff, but mostly what it'll be are the things you like. So if you make a piece of furniture, even if you're just copying something, when you're finished, there's a good chance there'll be some part of it that you particularly like. It might be the treatment of an edge or the shape of a back or could be just the wood you used, it could be anything, but there'll be something there and you think, oh I really like that. And then you make another piece. Again, not necessarily your design, probably not your design, but you do it because you like it for whatever reason, and again, you pick up another little thing that you like about it. And the point is that over time, you accumulate these details of things that are special to you. You like them.

And so it makes sense then that as you make things, you try to incorporate the things you like into those things. And those things that you like are the beginning of your design language. It's your language because those details are what you put together to make up a finished piece. And in that sense, it really is a language, and you know, over time, it can change, you can add new things, you can discard other things which you either no longer like, or have decided they are not really as good as these other things, or sometimes you choose one assortment of them, and in another place, you put choose another assortment.

But all the really good woodworkers, like Sam Maloof, James Krenov and Judy McKee, you can recognise their pieces. You can say that's a Maloof, that's a Krenov, that's a McKee, because their language is distinctive. It is them.

I think woodworkers that see one of my pieces, not all of them, but probably quite a lot of them would know that it was mine. Partly because there are not many people doing what I do. Even someone like Grant Vaughan, who does beautiful forms, his language is quite different to mine, apart from the common element of the wood. The things he makes aren't really all that similar to mine, I don't think, but some things have always distinguished mine right from the get go.

One is that if I do a geometric form, particularly fluted forms, I've always carved them inside and out. You'll find people that'll do one half, but not the other, usually because they're afraid of going through, making it too thin, making a hole. Or the other thing that would characterise my work is the fineness, the thinness of the walls, generally. Beyond that, maybe good curves, good shapes, things that work as much as possible, things that work from every angle. And maybe a certain simplicity.

Obviously you choose it because it appeals to you more for some reason. Maybe you can see it better, you can see the potential of it better, but it has to also fit within the framework of what you like. Everything, everything comes back in the end to what you like. Every judgement you make, every choice you make, comes down to: I choose this because I like it better than all those alternatives. 

No, I guess that's one of the amazing things, that somehow, somewhere, it happens. The problem for me is, I hate it. I hate the pressure. I know it works, but it's not something that I willingly put myself through. You know, Chiswell Furniture used to be very big back in the '70s '80s. It was Danish style furniture and there were two Australian companies, Chiswell and Parker. Well, one of the executives of Chiswell, I think it was Chiswell, one company like that, saw one of my chairs and said, "Oh would you like to do some chair designs for us?" And I ran a million miles away. I couldn't get away fast enough, because the idea of having to design chairs for them scared me shitless. And that is the difference between me and, say someone that is ambitious, 'cause they would have grabbed that opportunity with both hands. But I... I was too scared, I thought I wouldn't be able to do it. But now I know, I would have been able to do it, and probably do it quite well, but I just.. Yeah, too scared to try at the time, which I suppose is another element of design. I think every maker is aware of the fear of failure, or the fear that you won't be able to do it. I have tended to avoid situations where I am under that pressure. 

The magic thing of where ideas come from, God, if you could crack that you'd be rich. There are some people who have so many ideas they will never get to the end of them. But that's not me, I'm on the other end of the scale. And that's why when I get an idea, I tend to mine it. When I started out with flutes, I did straight flutes, I did ones that were concave, some that were convex, and then I did them in V's, and they just went straight down, and then I spiralled them up and did them again, concave, convex, Vs. And then I had the idea to flip one over, start one way, finish the other, and then that created a hole in the side, which then led on to other bowls with holes in them, and that's been a fairly productive seam that I have mined in different ways. That's a fallback position. If you can't come up with a fresh new idea, you mine one of your old ones and again, when you 20 years down the track, you can look back at something you've done, and then use all your current experience to maybe make it better or different or just a different interpretation. So you've got more stuff to work with. 

Well, I don't know if this is an answer, but for some reason, my work has fallen into two different sections. There's one lot of work, which is geometric. And geometric, in a lot of ways, it's easy because you just draw it out as you want it, and then you carve it. And once you've carved, say, the first flute, you've locked in the design, right? From there on, it's just like monkey work in a way, you're just repeating the same thing. It's not necessarily easy by a long shot, but the result is fixed, the minute that first flute's cut. 

The other lot, which is the free flowing 3D forms, those you have to create with every cut you make. And at any point, a cut can completely derail you because you take too much wood off somewhere, then you have to find a way to make the form work without that bit of wood, and it would be easy for that to be impossible if you took too much off somewhere. So it's a much more nerve-wracking process, and a slower process because you have to do a lot of looking and thinking and judging as you go. 

And in a way, it never ends because at the end of it, when you've finished it, the chances are there's going to be some part of it that you're not happy with, but you can't change. So the only thing you can do with that is either just finish it as best as you can and leave it at that. But I can't. I always have a compulsion to get the perfect solution and so I come back to them and do them again. Sometimes interestingly enough, I can be forced to do them again because the previous ones get broken, in transit, or somewhere, and then I have to make it again. And that's an interesting process because it always bears out something which I truly believe - that is, you have to make something more than once to get it right. And the more times you make it, the more the chances are, the better it will be, which is what happens in traditional craft. 

Usually the mistakes are not fatal. I mean, sometimes I've put holes in things, and I repair them. And usually, from a woodworking point of view, the highest skilled work in the bowl is a repair because it's very difficult to make a good repair that is invisible. But there's also the one situation I've had where something terrible happened was when I was making one of my white beech bowls. I was working on a table, a short table on one of my dentist chairs. I didn't have the ball vices in those days. So I used to work on a table, and I'd been working on this bowl and on the other side of the table, I had my buffing wheel, which I used to sharpen tools. And I got to a point where I needed to buff some tools, so I went around, switched the machine on, and I'm buffing away on these tools, and suddenly I hear a crash. I look up and the bowl I'd been working on, the vibration of the buffer had caused it to inch across the table and it fell on the floor. And it landed on one of the edges and broke a very large chunk out of it, like it would have been, I don't know, maybe triangular piece about 40 mils on each edge. You know, it was a big piece. It wasn't something that I can glue in because it was White Beech, and in the lighter colour timbers, you always see the glue lines. So that wasn't an option. 

Now, luckily, I had another piece of wood out of the same block, exactly the same size, so all I could do was just set that broken bowl aside and start again. Which is what I did, and I finished the bowl, without any other mishaps. And as I got towards the end of it, I started to look at the broken bowl, and I thought, you know, maybe, maybe I can make something out of that. And I started to have a look at it, and there's where we go back to the conversation we were having before about restraints. This break, the broken piece, obviously put a pretty big restraint on what I could do with that bowl. But almost straight away, what I think I started to do was I said, well, the first thing I know about this is I've got to get rid of that broken bit. So I just carved that bit out, and had a look at it, and then I thought, well, then I can do this, and then I could do that. And before I knew it, I had another design which I finished, and I sent both of them to an exhibition in America. The repaired one, the one that I had originally broken, it sold first. It sold before the other one. So that gave me a lot of confidence. I thought, well, it doesn't really matter what happens. There's a good chance I'll be able to fix it, and not waste it. 

I've certainly had occasions where I've been not happy with pieces, but it depends on your circumstances. If I'm making something now, and I'm happily settled here and I've got my classes to give me an income, if I have to throw a bowl away, it's not the end of the world. But when you're working to survive, and you're working to make a living, by the time you get three quarters through one of these things, you've got an awful lot invested in it, and you can't throw it away. You can't afford to throw it away. So then you've got to maybe put out into the world something that you'd really prefer not to, because you don't have any real choice in the matter. That's probably never literally true. You probably always have choices, but it can be that the choices are not ones you want to look at. 

Often I can help them fix things. I've made quite a lot of repairs to student jobs where they put a hole in it or it's just they don't have the skill yet to be able to repair it, but I do, so I can repair it for them. And I usually do that in the week between the classes, if I can. An interesting case is with a student. She and I have sort of evolved this way of working, where she'll come in with an interesting piece, usually of driftwood. She has a source somewhere, often it's Huon pine, which she gets from Tasmania, and it's an interesting shaped bit of wood, and that's what's appealed to her in the first place. And she'll come in with this bit of wood, and she'll have an idea. She'll say, you know, I'm thinking of doing this and, you know, taking advantage of this line or the way the grain flows here. And then my involvement is to help her take that idea, and to resolve it, for want of a better word, help her to make the lines run. 

It's that whole thing about what makes a good line, and it's easier to see when you've got a bit of wood and you can say, well, that line there is going to be better than that one over there. So that's the way you go. And so between us, we've managed. She's turned out some very nice pieces and my involvement occasionally might be critical but not often. Usually most of the work, certainly all the carving work, she does, and most of the design work she does. 

But I can help her in some cases. Say "no, I don't think that's right." "I think we should go this way, not that way." Or "those two lines don't quite work, so you need to straighten that one". Little things like that, which can make a big difference to the end result. That's another way of working with the students and with designs. 

Possibly, in a way, is that they don't have to. Like, if you're working and it's a business and you're trying to create things to sell, or obviously if you're in a business, you have some ambition, and students don't generally have such a powerful ambition. So that's one element, how important it is to do it. 

Another is that it takes time to happen, and classes are deceptive. Three hours per class, and say 40 to 45 classes in a year, only adds up to three to four weeks of class time. Even though the effects of those classes is far greater than the time alone would indicate, it still isn't much compared with, say a year of full time, professional work.

I always say you have to grow into your work. You evolve as a carver, from an anxious beginner to a competent craftsperson, and your work has to also evolve - both technically and aesthetically.