“An artist who could not stop himself, (Hans) Wegner was busting with ideas he had to express. Although a functionalist, he was not a rational dogmatist like many of Kaare Klint’s students. His furnishings were always created with the greatest understanding of materials, construction techniques, and use. Still, his aim was not primarily the harmonious or rational form but rather the expressive and exciting design. Wegner seems to posses the knowledge that you cannot design your way out of your own time – something most of the other Modernists had difficulty facing. Therefore, his furniture is anything but timeless: Wegner designed for his era.”
— Christian Holmsted Olesen, “Wegner: Just One Good Chair” (Hatje Cantz, 2014)
For the last six months, my teaching schedule has been light – I’ve had to cancel a bunch of trips to assist with some serious medical issues in my immediate family. As an odd result, I’ve had a luxurious amount of time to design and build things.
This time has been exciting – to me at least. I’ve explored a bunch of new designs that are based on my last five years of research into early furniture. I am weirdly enthusiastic about the stuff I’m now sketching, drafting and building. I have more than a dozen new pieces I want to draft and build.
However, for the last six months I think I’ve also developed a severe case of myopia. Without feedback from students, I’ve ventured into places that are odd and difficult for them to get excited about.
So I’m at a Robert Johnson sort of crossroads. Do I continue down the weird and delightful path I’ve been traveling this year to see where it takes me? (Knowing it’s likely a dead end.) Or do I double down on the teaching and use that as a compass to guide my research and building? More workbenches. Other tool chests. Traditional appliances. Unexplored hand-tool techniques.
This is a tough question. Time to drink a double IPA and look for answers.
My youngest daughter, Katy, has been taking art classes at the Cincinnati Art Academy this summer, so I have been duplicating some of her interesting exercises while she’s in bed or not watching.
Last week, her instructor made them engage in some 45-second sketching exercises. Katy and the other students were shown an object and given 45 seconds to sketch it. I was fascinated by how the students could capture the essence of the object in such a short period.
It reminded me of some Zen ink painting I had done in college, but that’s another story.
So I resolved to sketch some of my furniture designs in 45 seconds or less to see what would happen. I have about 20 different forms floating around in my head right now, so I barfed out a few this evening while sitting in a Syracuse, N.Y., hotel room.
After a few crappy attempts I got into a groove. First I drew the floor – that was a huge help. Then I started sketching the elevation.
I tried sketching some orthographic views, but those were more difficult because I fussed over getting the perspective correct instead of capturing the overall form. My best drawings were simple straight-on views of elevation, profile and plan.
And 45 seconds is plenty of time.
I drew these on the back of some old airline boarding passes. I forgot my sketch book.
“Nearly all articles of free-standing furniture are variations on two basic shapes: a platform or a box.”
— John Gloag, “A Social History of Furniture Design: From B.C. 1300 to A.D. 1960” (Crown).
One caveat, Mr. Gloag. Some pieces of furniture are both a platform and a box.
As I finish up “The Furniture of Necessity” book, I’ve started to play a little game with myself. It’s called “S$%^w Dovetails.” I try to figure out how to build a piece of furniture without dovetails or other high-class joinery.
In other words: Can I build solid, solid pieces with only staked joints and some nails?
Today I designed a bunch of beds. I could have designed these beds by making boxes with nails alone, but then they would look too much like platform waterbeds. At the Schwarz household one Christmas we ALL received waterbeds. (Did I mention that I become easily seasick?)
I’m going to build some of these beds when I return from Boston and before I head to England. But my little design game has also made my pencil go nuts with sideboards, dressers, desks, couches and chairs.
Clearly, I’ve given myself over to my odd ideas about furniture and am wallowing in my own… pig excrement at this point. But the option is to wallow in someone else’s historical excrement, which could have more corn kernels than is to my liking.
— Christopher Schwarz
Note: I removed the suggestion of a very coarse word in the text above. Not because anyone complained (no one did), but because I had intended to soften it before publishing and forgot. Apologies.
If ordinary applied art has a personal stamp, this means that it is incomplete. The artist has not gotten past his mistakes or arrived at the typical solution that is just as ordinary and natural in form as a Yale lock, a fountain pen, a bicycle, a scythe, a shovel. Imagine if a bicycle bore the mark of the artist who had designed it!
— Poul Henningsen (1894-1967), Danish author, architect and critic
