# The unedited John Brown



## Cottonwood (19 Oct 2013)

Interesting provocative article on Tony Konvaloff's site

http://tonykonovaloff.com/?page_id=1064


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## RogerP (19 Oct 2013)

Interesting and I admit to agreeing with some of what he says about not using machinery. 

But I also note his workshop is stuffed to the gills with all manner of expensive tools - most made with machines.......?


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## PAC1 (19 Oct 2013)

The problem is that in the UK the public want handmade furniture at IKEA prices and will not pay a decent rate. Take my avatar I tell people that it takes 100 to 120 hours to make. They are still shocked when I say I want £5k for such a chair made to suit them. Most say they will pay no more than £1k. We do not proceed to a sale. If I did it completely by hand with no machining at all I estimate it would take 150 or more hours. If I spent those extra hours no one would pay me for them so why make life harder than it needs to be.


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## Richard Findley (19 Oct 2013)

Firstly, a plee to website makers, don't put white text on a black background. Having read that article half an hour ago I can still see stripes!!

It's quite an extreme view which I can only partly agree with. He seems to suggest that if you use machines you make ugly work. If you use hand tools you produce beauty. The fact is, if you are talented and skilled you use the machines to make the elegant designs you want. Machines make life easier but you need to make them work for you and not be restricted by their capabilities. 

Machines make more waste. Really? Use a saw bench to rip the timber, it's a 3mm blade not a 1.5mm (double the waste!!) use a p/t instead of a jointer plane? The wood is either true or not. Router or moulding plane, the shape is cut or not. A tenon is the same size cut by hand or machine. I don't buy it. 

In real life you need balance and, as much as I enjoyed reading the article, this is an extremist view and so lacks balance. 

Just my thoughts

Thanks for the link

Richard


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## Jacob (19 Oct 2013)

Richard Findley":1y5llgsz said:


> Firstly, a plee to website makers, don't put white text on a black background. Having read that article half an hour ago I can still see stripes!!


Agree. I couldn't read it - had to copy and paste into BBedit. I'll post it in the next window.

I don't think it's extremist, more just rhetorical. It was written few years ago and there's a lot more hand tool use going on now. I do agree about the bloody router being a PITA - I hate them. I also think there's huge pressure to de-skill - we are constantly told that various hand processes (not just sharpening!) are really difficult and it's better to buy a gadget (or a DVD, course, etc). But there are a lot of tasks are done more efficiently (also more enjoyably) by hand (particularly freehand sharpening!) and many hand made things have a special quality which no machine can reproduce.


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## Jacob (19 Oct 2013)

The text:

My grandmother used to tell me that most of life’s ills were caused by men chasing money. Even fifty years ago the poor old dear could not understand what all the rush was about. She had a theory that the heartbeat hadn’t altered since time began, and that the pace of life should be regulated by this fact. I didn’t take any notice of her at the time, but recently I’ve had cause to recall her words. The speed of life is out of synchronisation with the human body. If we could slow our lives down a little, think of quality before quantity, there would be more time to savour the pleasant things before we are forced to rush on to something else.

Woodworkers are not excused this malady, every bit of literature, every handbill or periodical to do with the craft is packed with advertisements for machines. A young man interested in making things out of wood can be excused for believing that machines are a fundamental necessity. Hand tools have been relegated to the small ads section, or second hand or antique dealers, as though they were relics of the past whose use went out with grandfather. I have been into woodwork shops where there was hardly a decent usable hand tool in the place. A screwdriver, some plastic handled chisels and spanners, all mixed up in the same box

The price of timber once seemed of little consequence. Now, with rain forest problems and a general scarcity, this has become a very expensive raw material. A return to the use of hand tools, apart from being less wasteful, would add more value to this precious material. I fully appreciate the average woodworker cannot render tree trunks into planks, and handsawing huge bulks is pure sweat, so the use of a power saw is necessary. That is all that is required to lead a full and satisfying woodworking life.

Power machines are unfriendly for they are very noisy and make a lot of unpleasant dust. Craft woodworking should be a creative activity, with the practioners as artists. Surrounded by ugly, noisy, dusty machines the woodworker does not have the environment in which to do good work.

There are two main health hazards from frequent use of machinery, that is apart from cutting off the fingers. Dust and noise. Neither of these is instantly apparent, as is an amputation, but nevertheless, they are just as dangerous. The most frightening is nasopharyngeal, or nasal cancer, closely associated with wood dust. Although a rare disease, the incidence can be as high as breast cancer. This, of course, applies to full time workers, but the residual chance is not insignificant amongst occasional users. Then, constant exposure to high levels of noise can damage the ears and lead to premature deafness.

Of course you can wear protective clothing and apparatus against these ills. But to mummify yourself in this way can only be to the detriment of careful work. I have seen a colour photograph in a magazine of a man using a bandsaw. Ha has on a rubber face mask, ear muffs and goggles, perhaps it is just a coincidence that he closely resembles a chimpanzee! Recent British magazines have a large advertisement featuring a bright faced youth, who looks entirely happy in the most ridiculous, all-encompassing headwear I have ever seen. Picture if you will a cabinet maker working on a fine piece of oak furniture, clad in a hard hat! I am sure the sense of control of the operator is impaired by wearing all this safety equipment. Dust accumulates on the goggles, giving poor vision, and it is often a subtle change of sound that tells you a blade is about to break. Some smocks I have seen must restrict the free movement of the arms, resembling a canvas straight jacket. To work thus on machinery takes courage, and the use of such bravery has a stress effect which is cumulative.

The reason for the introduction of machinery in the 19th century was to speed up production in the factories. The words of Adam Smith were burned large into brains of the industrialists. Water, then steam and finally electricity provided ample power, and in that great age of innovation machines were invented to cope with more and more processes. The owners cared not a jot for design or quality, unless it affected sales. Quantity was the main criteria. How can we make more profit? Unskilled people could be trained to work a single operation machine in days. The fact that these operators had no interest in their work, and did the job for what money they could get, interested no one, except people like Ruskin, C R Ashbee and William Morris.

Since the last great war, it seems that these same principles have been adopted by modern woodworkers. Yet the motivation is entirely different. I have never known a craft woodworker who does the job only for money, or at least admits to this. Woodworkers pursue the craft because they love it, they enjoy working with wood, and they get great satisfaction from seeing a well finished piece. To a man, or woman, they try their hardest to do fine work, and to produce an artifact of delight. If this is not true, how come there are so many well supported competitions? They all love to show their work, and are proud of it. I don’t suppose there has ever been a time when so much effort has gone in to producing good work.

Unfortunately a large part of the works on show are made by machines. And at what cost! Many thousands of dollars are spent on all these machines, saws and re-saws, lathes, planers, thicknessers, spindle moulders, mortising machines, dowelling machines and biscuit jointers, dovetail attachements, belt sanders and portable machines of all kinds. New ones every week. They come in a myriad of shapes and sizes. The daddy of them all is the router. This screaming monster, used for nearly everything, turns at so many revolutions that the poor wood doesn’t stand a chance.

Now, apart from he initial expense of this armoury, there are attachments to buy, numerous cutters for different profiles, saw blades to be bought, and few of these things can be satisfactorily sharpened by the user, they have to be sent away. The operator becomes a mechanic producing precision engineered works, This has little to do with woodworking.

What about the extra time it takes to do a piece by hand? Well, it can take a little longer, that’s true. You need to be well organised the workshop laid out properly, and above all you must have a first class bench. The “kitchen table” might do in a machine shop, but for hand work the bench is the very hub of success. It must be heavy, at the right height, and with good, accurate vices, positioned to cope with the kind of work you are doing. The hand too maker needs the best bench he can make – or afford! You must know your tools, what they are made of, fine adjustments and sharpening angles. Everything must be clean and sharp. Tools talk to the craftsman, and will let you know when they are right. What the machine does by noisy, brute force, you will be able to do with quiet cunning.

I doubt there’s much saving in machine work over hand work for the small one-off maker. If you’re an amateur it doesn’t matter. The quality will be so much better. The satistaction of the maker won’t compare, and this will show itself in the finished piece. A professional will have to charge a little more. People will pay it. With the saving in capital cost, bank interest, and the time consuming business of setting up machines, you could be better off.

It is difficult to know whether manchine mania was led by the woodworking press, or that the papers were merly following a craftsman led trend. I am inclined to the former opinion. It looks as though the machinery manufacturers have the technical press in a vicelike grip, leaving the humble hobbyist to believe taht unless he buys the machines he will be a second class woodworking citizen. I was always led to understand that machines were there to do the tedious work, and that the craftsman’s skills should actually do the making. Gradually the idea of what is tedious has been updated, for it is now possible to make complicated pieces entirely with machinery. The only handwork left to be done is to lift the wood to the machine. I am sure the manufacturers will cope with this in time!

I ask, where is the pride of the craftsman? Does he, or she, think that money is a short cut to skill? I have seen wonderful work done by amateurs, using hand tools. True it does take time to learn the skills required, and much practice. It’s a pity the apprenticeship system has gone, when young people were exposed for five years to good proctices, working alongside skilled men. Pride in work, pride in a fine set of tools, I know this is now unfashionable, but there is nothing wrong with being proud of one’s achievements. It is between a man and his God whether that pride is false or not. Some woodwork is quite tricky and needs lots of practice. The wonder and joy as each hurdle is leaped has to be experienced to be believed. The material you work with is not uniform it is moody, it can be deceptive, sometimes hiding faults until the very last moment of finishing, and you have to start all over again. Handwork breeds patience, and grannie’s words are recalled, about speed and the heartbeat.

The kind of accuracy you can achieve cannot be measured in “thous”. It’s not nececessary. An eighth or a sixtenth of and inch. Closer than that is a sixteenth “full” or “slack”, and for the perfectionist we are down to a “gnat’s whisker”. I have heard of micrometers being used on tenons. Frankly, I find this ridiculous.

I would not go so far as to say that there are no skills necessary to working machines. It is important to be able to read and interpret complicated instructions. What you end up with is engineering skills – precision engineering in wood.

I have spoken to many woodworkers on this subject, and I am heartened by their defensive attitude. “I have a few machines” means they have a lot, and “but I seldom use them” means they use them all the time.

As a substitute for apprenticeship these days we have training colleges. I believe in the United States it is possible to obtain a degree at universities (“I mastered in woodwork”). These young people, having been taught design and machine skills, feel they should come out of college and jump straight into the first division. One or two of the cheekier ones do just this. They ply their unsubtle wares, made with ersatz woodworking skills, often making wood look like plastic. Fortunately most of them are seven day wonders and soon disappear. I hold no regard for this type of work. The main skill required is in hiding the machine marks. I suspect these young people never feel that wonderful, solid confidence of the apprentice who has just finished his five years, and with his beautiful handmade tool-box, full of fine tools, is about to set out in the world to do good work.

Norman Potter, in his recent book, Models and Constructs, tells the story of a visit to his workshop of a Gimson trained cabinet maker called Rex. He told how Gimson would run his finger along the under edges of a newly finished piece, saying “kindly Rex, keep your edges kindly”. (I can find no specification called “kindly edges” in the standard textbooks!) I am reminded of that wonderful quotation in the front of Dr Schumacher’s “Small is Beautiful”. “We are remodelling the Alhambra with a steam-shovel, and are proud of our yardage.” Those are the words of Aldo Leopold.

Handmade work has soul, it has verve, a sparkle which a machine cannot reproduce. Eric Gill would never let an apprentice stonemason incorporate a mistake into the design of a carving. It must stay for all to see, or be scrapped. There is a lack of understanding to this kind of approach which inhibits the modern woodworker. The apparent “perfection” of some machined operations has trapped the craftsman into feeling that this is the way it should be. There is no excuse for lazy people or shoddy work, hand or machine, but it is nice to think that this table, or this chair, was made by a human being.

You often see people inspecting furniture minutely to see if all the joints are tight, or to see if there is any slackness in the dovetails, or perhaps they are looking for graving pieces to cover a mistake. This annoys me. Do these people do the same to a painting in an art gallery? A firm I know makes one-off pieces, things like Welsh dressers, and furniture in the Georgian style. The joinery is impeccable. This company has the very latest in machines. Yet it is possible to detect their work from a good distance, it is so ugly. They undoubtedly sell things, I believe they export occasional items. They will certainly never fall to pieces, which in a way is rather a pity. As one stands back to appreciate a painting, so it should be with a piece of furniture. Is it beautiful, well proportioned? Will it do the job it was designed to do? Is it strong enough for its purpose and will it last? Do I like it, can I live with it? When the customer has asked these questions only then does the price come up. If it is handmade and has live it will probably be sold.

Corporately the public taste is quite good. Individually we can criticise people for spending their money on badly designed goods, but there seems to be a balance that prevails. Successful cabinet makers and joiners have only become so because people like what they make. They rarely advertise so the old saying about building a better mousetrap must be true. The entrepreneurs that run substantial and elaborate galleries know what they can sell for they have usually built up a following who buy what they are told. This group must rank amongst the taste makers. However, by far the greater part of craftsman made woodwork is sold at the workshop door, then by word or mouth recommendations. This takes a long time to build up for there is a credibility gap. The main advantage of selling direct is that the large mark-ups for the showrooms are avoided. There is also a personal relationship with the customer.

“Wisdom demands a new orientation of science and technology towards the organic, the gentle, the non-violent, the elegant and beautiful.” These again are the words of Schumacher, an economist, a breed not normally associated with such sentiments. In a spiritual way I think there is a parallel with the organic farming movement. When they first started organic growers were ridiculed by the establishment as “mud and muck” freaks. Now, demand for their product far outstrips supply, and with framing problems as they are, I think they will have the last laugh. No one has grasped this particular nettle. The money man, and his pet poodle, the advertising man, have woodworkers in a vicelike grip. They have created the need for all this junk, and now they fulfil the need. If that’s what woodworkers want, good luck to them, but I hope they won’t have the gall to talk about skill. It reminds me of painting by numbers!

The Shaker style has had a great revival. I am certain this has nothing to do with celibacy!. It is the simple beauty of Shaker designs, the lack of fussy ornament. The shape of the furniture and it’s proportions are what attract. There is probably a residual idea that the Shakers were honest craftsmen, and the goods were well made. This is true, but unfortunately the get rich merchants have detected the mood and the cash registers hum in Shaker shops. Many of the products they sell are factory made at astronomical prices, for certain that’s true in London. I suspect there is a spiritual element firing this revival, owning a Shaker piece might bring them nearer to God. As the last Shaker Eldress said before she died in 1990, “I don’t want the Shaker religion to be remembered as a chair”. They were right though, it is a gift to be simple.

I often feel that the craftsman of today is recreating in his little heaven, the very hell that the industrialists of the last century were so soundly dubbed for.

Woodworkers should look anew at their hand tools. Take the meanest, rusty plane, clean it, grind the blade and sharpen it – like a razor – then set it up, cap iron, mouth opening, there are plenty of books to tell you how if you don’t know. Now, set very fine, run it over a scrap of oak. Hear the sound it makes (you can tell a sharp plane by the sound), and feel the perfect finish. Use a sharp chisel, what a thrill.

Craftsmen in wood who agree with the sentiments expressed here should make a self-denying ordinance, that after a certain date they will give up their machines. Then they should tell everyone what they are doing, broadcast the message, print it on their headed notepaper, make a statement. Perhaps there’s a need for an organisation like the Soil Association, with a “Good Work” symbol.

If you make your furniture by hand, news will soon spread, and people will travel to see your work, and they will buy it! I have worked with machines in other people’s employ. I have owned some machines myself. Years ago I examined what I was doing and went “organic”. I haven’t regretted it once. It was a renewal of my love affair with wood.

The saying that if it’s any good they don’t make it any more, becomes increasingly true. We must do our best best to turn things round. We must educate ourselves, and our customers to realise what quality really means, quality in making quality in design, and finally quality of life. Our children are educated to believe that success is making money, quickly if possible. The politics of recent times have encouraged us to turn greed into a religion.

What I have said here is about as fashionable as advising people to sell their car, and take a bus, or even walk. Real progress can only be spiritual progress. The calm and unhurried atmosphere in my workshop makes enough to pay the bills for a simple life, no more. God bless you, and remember, Good Work.”

John Brown, 1997


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## Richard Findley (19 Oct 2013)

there's huge pressure to de-skill - we are constantly told that various hand processes (not just sharpening!) are really difficult and it's better to buy a gadget (or a DVD, course, etc). But there are a lot of tasks are done more efficiently (also more enjoyably) by hand (particularly freehand sharpening!) 


I agree with this. Like I say, it's about balance. De-skill so far and you can only produce blocky and ugly furniture that he describes. In the world of turning there is a massive urge to de-skill, using carbide tools instead of proper turning tools. A step too far I feel. In the article he lists lathes as one of the dreadful machines he hates. A step too far in the other direction I feel. 

I have worked in the no hand tool environment and it isn't much fun. In my workshop I have, I feel, a good balance between the two. 

Each to their own though. 

Richard


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## Jacob (19 Oct 2013)

Hey Richard you've got yellow text on a black background - just as unreadable as white! What's wrong with black text on white background? I don't bother reading texts on black backgrounds unless I'm desperate and I'm sure I'm not the only one. It's a very basic mistake. My eyesight is OK by the way.

PS just had another look it's dark green, black from some angles.


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## Richard Findley (19 Oct 2013)

Haha! Definitely ivory on dark green! I've spent hours on that site (although much less recently) and never had the eye reaction I have to black and white!  

Richard


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## Halo Jones (19 Oct 2013)

> Take my avatar I tell people that it takes 100 to 120 hours to make. They are still shocked when I say I want £5k for such a chair made to suit them.



5K for 120 hours work. I work 40 -50 hours a week, or 160 - 200 h a month and only get paid £3000 a month before tax, pension etc so have about 2K to spend on the mortgage, heating, food etc. I am probably at least as qualified as you but in a different discipline. I assume you still have business rates, rent etc on top of everything but it sounds to me like you are on to a winner if you are able to make 8 - 10k a month. 

Where do I sign to re-train?


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## Rhossydd (19 Oct 2013)

Halo Jones":2exwp8zn said:


> Where do I sign to re-train?


First learn the difference between turnover and profit


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## cambournepete (19 Oct 2013)

I can see what he's getting at and I, like many others I guess, have fallen into the "I need that power tool to be able to make that thing" trap.
Having said that that I think for most makers a combination of power and hand tools is best. Why should I spend hours removing waste by hand when a machine can do it in minutes, for example?

Horses for courses


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## Harry 48 (19 Oct 2013)

I can remember John did articles for one of the woodworking magazines and very good they were but his continual rants about power tools made him unpopular with the tool advertisers. The question of hand or power tool in MHO is each to his own


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## Berncarpenter (19 Oct 2013)

Thanks Jacob for normal text i had to give up reading the white on black about half the way through .
Cheers Bern.


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## [email protected] (20 Oct 2013)

IMO the writer has fallen into the self indulgent and classic trap that many suffer of wishing to produce items to their agenda not the clients. I doubt many clients give a hoot about whether their table has been made largely by machine or by hand. Yes a few will care - but when it comes to earning a living you go with what the client wants and is happy with not how you want to work yourself unless of course you are fortunate to be insulated from the real world!


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## nathandavies (20 Oct 2013)

woodworking snobbery at its most extreme.

in an ideal world I walk out of my workshop with an axe in the morning to fell my 300 yr old oak picked for its suitability for a job, and in 7 or 8 years after waiting for drying etc I will have produced that perfect piece of furniture for the very patient client who hopefully has not died in the waiting period.

I along with probably most people who come to this website day dream of working with handtools all day to make a living producing beautiful one off pieces of furniture. unfortunately I do not think that in 2013 that is a viable idea, for 99.9% of us. it sounds like he would like to go back to a time with a boy in the pit for 8 hrs with the slightly more senior worker up above sawing timber into more manageable lumps for him.

his notions of ppe making people into monkeys and unable to here the tools is ludicrous in so many ways. with my ear protection on (I love my hearing, I don't want to loose it) I can still tell what is happening with my tools, I can tell how sharp my panel saw blade is by the sound it makes moving air. ear protection deadens sound, it doesn't remove it completely. eye protection (I love my sight, I don't want to loose it) I wear glasses constantly so I tend to use them as my protection, and yes they get a little dust on them occasionally, but to the extent of not being able to see what I am doing! is he mentally deficient? if you get dust on your protection I think you clean it off before you get to the point of blindness or you are guessing measurments as you can no longer see the tape. breathing protection (I love breathing, I don't want to stop) I stupidly do not wear masks as much as I should but I have and continue to work on my air quality using extractors for any task that makes dust or shavings. him saying that people in ppe look like chimps, I would turn on its head, as I think I would look more like one if I was stumbling around blind, deaf, and bent over double trying to take a breath.

the router vs the "poor wood" seriously are you ok? it's a lump of wood. it would have been a lot happier if it was still growing in the forest amongst its friends. what are you on about, that it doesn't stand a chance, you make it sound like the router is the big bully against the weedy piece of wood, does he feel like him and his collection of 500 planes give the wood a fighting chance? ah mr oak you put up a good fight, and I have been defeated, now go run back to the woods.

I was going to go on, but it's 5.30 am and this retard has done his job by winding me up, and I need more coffee and tobacco. I may come back to this and continue my rant, but in the meantime I need to walk 5 miles to town to pick up my sunday paper which I get hand written onto linen every week.


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## Jacob (20 Oct 2013)

[email protected]":29cypcqu said:


> IMO the writer has fallen into the self indulgent and classic trap that many suffer of wishing to produce items to their agenda not the clients......


I think we all do that, but it's not a trap. 
We decide what sort of work we want to do for ourselves and then try to make it viable. If the client has drain unblocking or painting and decorating on his agenda we don't just change trades. The classic trap is to allow the client to make all the decisions - you are supposed to be the expert telling him what he needs and how things should be done, not the other way around.


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## kreed (20 Oct 2013)

What a fantastic article. Fabulously written & illustrated. I could read stuff like this all day. (my son has just started Sports Journalism at Uni & I love his footy match reviews)

Long live the extension of the hand & eye


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## marcus (20 Oct 2013)

Having been a total hand-tool purist at one time I can relate to where he is coming from, but I would now agree with Richard that a bit more balance is not a bad thing. 

I found that several years of working several hours a day by hand was taking a severe toll on my body, and it was clear that this was going to end very badly another ten or twenty years down the line. Dimensioning a lot of oak by hand is really punishing after a time if you're doing it day in, day out. I had machines in the workshop as well for the more commercial work I needed to do, and in the end the temptation became too great! 

My reasons for working only by hand on high quality pieces was that —as he says— handmade things do (or rather _can_, sometimes) have a quality of life and a sparkle that industrial processes can't really reproduce. However I have since found that there are ways and approaches you can use with machines that _help_ you make by hand, rather than dictating the process as they do in industrial production. The machine becomes an ally rather than a master. This allows you to produce work with character, with a human feel, while still saving some time and energy. And you are of course free to use hand methods where they make the most difference to the final look and feel of the piece, which is probably in only about 20% of the total work.

Also, as Krenov points out, getting some help from machines frees up energy to focus on the finer details, and can therefore make your work _better_. And we live in a world where machines are part of our life, and we couldn't now survive without them, so to come sort of accommodation with them seems a bit more honest. I guess it's about accepting the world we live in (at least up to a point) and that there is a necessity for some sort of compromise in life, ie growing up a bit. At least that's how it was for me. Though of course if it's a hobby only, and you enjoy the peace and quiet of hand tools, then that's a different thing entirely, and a very nice way to spend time.....


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## John Brown (21 Oct 2013)

Very interesting. I wish I'd written all that, as I don't have the time to read it.

No relation.


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## bugbear (21 Oct 2013)

Richard Findley":108cw5p8 said:


> It's quite an extreme view which I can only partly agree with. He seems to suggest that if you use machines you make ugly work. If you use hand tools you produce beauty. The fact is, if you are talented and skilled you use the machines to make the elegant designs you want. Machines make life easier but you need to make them work for you and not be restricted by their capabilities.
> 
> Machines make more waste. Really? Use a saw bench to rip the timber, it's a 3mm blade not a 1.5mm (double the waste!!) use a p/t instead of a jointer plane? The wood is either true or not. Router or moulding plane, the shape is cut or not. A tenon is the same size cut by hand or machine. I don't buy it.
> 
> In real life you need balance and, as much as I enjoyed reading the article, this is an extremist view and so lacks balance.



Agreed - it's a matter of wether the machines are master or servant. It's also easy to use handtools to make very blocky furniture. A curved moulding is (almost...) impossibly laborious to carve by hand, where a spindle moulder will allow this design element to be used freely.

On a literary, he also says the same thing, over and over again. Some editing would have helped, and good editing would have kept his message, and probably made it clearer.

BugBear


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## Cheshirechappie (21 Oct 2013)

John Brown lived life (at least, the latter part of his life) in his own way, by his own rules. He made a small income by chairmaking, and lived within that income, accepting what many of us would regard as significant sacrifices of modern comforts. To live life that way requires a fairly strong mind and a certain bloody-minded determination, which I think is reflected in his writing.

I agree with Bugbear that his writing style is not the most elegant or concise, but as he lived and worked first and wrote as a secondary activity, his writings do have integrity. I think there are many in the environmentalist movement and some in journalism who write very eloquently espousing the 'simple life', but who themselves enjoy a good standard of living with all the mod cons. That makes John Brown the better writer for me - his words carry weight because he wrote as he lived.

John Brown's way would not be my way, nor I suspect most people's way, and he was very opinionated; but at least he was honest and consistent in his opinions, and himself lived as he advocated.

Would his way work as a wider social model? I very much doubt it - you can't turn the clock back. But it would work for some people, and there's no harm at all in that.


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## marcus (21 Oct 2013)

> He made a small income by chairmaking



Which is a significant point I think — it is possible even now to do this with chairs using only hand tools, just about. The trouble comes if you want to make bigger things. Then you find that the time and energy required increases in direct proportion to the size of the piece in a way that it doesn't if you have some machine help. If, for example, you make a dresser twice as big by hand, then it takes close to twice as long, and almost twice as much energy is expended. If the dresser is four times bigger, it costs almost four times as much in time and energy. With machines to help with the hard work, the increase in size doesn't come with anything like such a big time and energy penalty — you can make a chest in not that much more time than it takes to make a jewellery box. 

So when he writes:



> If you make your furniture by hand, news will soon spread, and people will travel to see your work, and they will buy it!



I can only say that my experience is that, yes, people will look at it, and they will often love it, but they will then say that they cannot possibly afford it. Nowadays you can't make fine, one-off craftsman made things that anyone but the richest people can afford even using machines, unless it is something reasonably small and generic like chairs — so how can you hope to do it with larger objects by hand, where you are spending hours doing something that a machine can do in minutes? 

And I do think there is an issue about honesty there. To me it's dishonest to bang on about the dangers of dust, and to harp on about the good old days, while conveniently ignoring the toll that a life of un-remitting manual labour would take on the bodies of those who were subjected to it. And it's dishonest to hold up his own particular ideal of production and craft as being superior to everyone else's without acknowledging that what he is proposing is completely economically impractical at anything more than the level of a chap making a few chairs. We can't go back to living like that without killing off most of the people, and if we did we would soon discover that, as something faced out of necessity rather than as a lifestyle choice, it is not nearly so much fun as it looks. 

Having said that, I think he is right about certain things — there's a strong case to be made for questioning the direction we are headed as a culture, and what our priorities are, and how we approach work and design and building, and the environment, and all sorts of other things, but what he seems to be proposing is no kind of answer, unless it's a personal answer only for himself, which doesn't seem to be his point....


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## Jacob (21 Oct 2013)

Cheshirechappie":2x2t81tn said:


> ....
> Would his way work as a wider social model? I very much doubt it - you can't turn the clock back. But it would work for some people, and there's no harm at all in that.


I don't think he's proposing it as a wider social model. And anyway he used a band saw, and his timber would have been almost entirely be machine produced, up to the point where it arrived at his shop.
But the wider social model possibility is interesting in that it would certainly create jobs. Not just pie in the sky - lots of studies show that in agriculture the peasant small-holding is generally more productive than agri business. People produce more food and are better off farming their own bit rather than working as labourers for someone farming the whole lot by machines, or more likely just being unemployed. And there's been a big revolution in micro brewing, micro baking, etc. I can see this working for wood products too. Not turning the clock back but a different (modern) approach.

PS In fact almost everybody on this forum agrees with John Brown to some extent - we are doing what we do because we choose to, hand tools and all, non of us can compete with IKEA and it'd make more sense for us to get proper jobs and allow somebody else to do our work


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## RossJarvis (21 Oct 2013)

I can agree very much with a lot of what John Brown says, but I do feel he is being a bit "elitist" and unkind about others who have not followed his own path. If this is the way you want to go then as one poster says, do it, though it involves a perceived sacrifice of material standards. However I feel there is also some rose tinted spectacle wearing and a bit of harking back to a "Golden Age" which never existed. Many ills came with industrialisation, but historically craftsmen would not have been able to possess the medium to higher end stuff they made themselves. Henry Ford may be guilty of much, but at least he paid his workers a good wage and made a product which they could afford. Industrialisation also brought with it modern medicine, soft bog-roll, an end to cold lino in the winter, drive-by shootings, the atomic bomb, web-sites like this. Every advance or regression is a double edged sword maybe?

We seem to be in a situation where we have to work harder and harder to possess more and more and the "economy" has to keep growing to stay still, That does seem a bit like madness to me. Slowing down a bit and making do with less and appreciating it more, seems like a good antidote to the modern malaise. However maybe its been like that since time began.


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## bugbear (21 Oct 2013)

RossJarvis":3eq620t4 said:


> However I feel there is also some rose tinted spectacle wearing and a bit of harking back to a "Golden Age" which never existed. Many ills came with industrialisation, but historically craftsmen would not have been able to possess the medium to higher end stuff they made themselves.



Quite right - even the lovely Arts and Crafts stuff was only for the wealthy!

BugBear


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## rafezetter (21 Oct 2013)

Rhossydd":z0r1qc37 said:


> Halo Jones":z0r1qc37 said:
> 
> 
> > Where do I sign to re-train?
> ...



Sorry to go offtopic a sec but, but even if his profit is only 50% for that chair - (which I don't believe for a second - 2.5k for materials and overheads to make such a chair.. really?) - 2.5k for woodworking for approx 120 hours, even a skilled craftsman, is incredible by anyone's "normal" standards.

To be frank if I was quoted such, my first question would be "show me how you came by such a large sum".

I'm not a cheapskate by any means, I've always believed in the system of a fair price for something, IF it's justified.


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## marcus (21 Oct 2013)

> To be frank if I was quoted such, my first question would be "show me how you came by such a large sum".



I don't have any idea about this particular case, but if it were a complex and high-end custom chair made to measure for one person that sounds about right. Obviously if things are being batched the price can come down dramatically.

£5000/120 is about £40 an hour, but it doesn't work out like that in real life. Most people running a small furniture-making business are doing well if they can get three solid days in the workshop a week to actually put in those hours. On top of this there is design time, marketing, quoting, accounts, web design, photography, dealing with suppliers, sourcing hardware, ordering timber, sending back timber that is not what you asked for, delivering pieces, visiting clients to quote, days spent quoting for jobs you don't end up getting etc, etc etc. And then the inevitable mistakes which you have to put right in your own time and can't charge for. All of this has to be paid for, but is not being charged for directly.

Then there is a need to pay for a workshop and possibly business rates (which depending on where you live can be eye-watteringly expensive). And electricity for running machines which is not getting cheaper. And heating a largish workspace so it is at least dry enough for the timber to stay at a sensible moisture level and you can feel your fingers. And then there's the day to day running of the workshop. This week alone I spent £40 on replacement filter elements, £35 on shellac, £30 on re-grinding blades. And then things break and need replacing. It's constant, all the time. It's amazing how much things like abrasives cost. And there may be loans to pay off for machinery. And insuring all that machinery, and power tools and hand tools, and a store of valuable timber, and pieces worth £000's of pounds in the workshop and in transit.

And then timber, which is not getting cheaper, and has to be top quality if you are going to charge the sort of prices you need to in order to do the job at all, which means a lot of wastage, and possibly a trip to a timber merchant who is not just down the road, or an expensive delivery from same. And for a chair with curved components you may be sawing curves from the solid, out of boards 3" or 4" thick which is damn expensive. It's surprising how much timber a single curvy chair can use.

Assuming that 120 hours is a reasonable time to make the chair, which it may well be, I would say that taking all that into account you might end up with, maybe £20 an hour, perhaps, out of the £40 you are charging to the client, if you are doing very well indeed. That sounds fair enough to me for skilled craftsmanship. I wouldn't grudge it to, say a piano tuner or a web designer. Go to anyone else who is actually making a living (I mean really making a living) doing custom fine-furniture making and nothing else, and that is the sort of price you will pay. I wish it could be less. How I wish it could be less.

All of which goes to show why making fine furniture for a living is so damn hard to make work, and why hardly anyone manages to make a living from it. Try it.


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## Rhossydd (21 Oct 2013)

rafezetter":g1y27ym2 said:


> 2.5k for woodworking for approx 120 hours, even a skilled craftsman, is incredible by anyone's "normal" standards.


You think £20/hr is "incredible" ? You must lead a very sheltered life.


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## Smithy (22 Oct 2013)

I am glad this article has generated the debate it deserves. I posted the article back in April and it got one comment. I have always been a big John Brown fan and he was the only reason I bought Good Woodworking. I agree it is a idealistic but it does have it's merits. The hand tool against power debate will continue forever and it is up to each individual to arrive at a compromise. How many people have a workshop full of powertools that for the most part gather dust and it would be more economic to spend a bit longer using a hand tool.

I appreciate that in this consumer driven society where price rules over quality it is a must for people to work with machinery. I would not think it was possible for someone with a family and mortgage/rental to generate enough income without some machinery. Even in John Browns case he had a bandsaw, which I would say is the minimum.

I would be intersted to know of any woodworkers who make a living completely without machinery. In this catergory I exclude people who teach and write.

Mike


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## bugbear (22 Oct 2013)

nagden":255c3isg said:


> I appreciate that in this consumer driven society where price rules over quality it is a must for people to work with machinery. I would not think it was possible for someone with a family and mortgage/rental to generate enough income without some machinery.



True, but only for people working wood for a living. People working wood for the simple joy of it can use whatever they like (and can afford).

BugBear


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## Jacob (22 Oct 2013)

But in any case its not either/or. Almost everybody (including Brown) does a bit of both. The important things are first, not to lose sight of how useful hand tools are and assume that a machine or gadget is the only modern way, second to recognise how much machines alter products - not just as alternative tools but a whole other area of craft skill and design.


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## Cottonwood (22 Oct 2013)

Jacob":nt1rs1g5 said:


> But in any case its not either/or. Almost everybody (including Brown) does a bit of both. The important things are first, not to lose sight of how useful hand tools are and assume that a machine or gadget is the only modern way, second to recognise how much machines alter products - not just as alternative tools but a whole other area of craft skill and design.



A good example was how he went against the holy grail accepted wisdom that chair arms _simply must_ be made from out of riven straight stock, nothing else will do. He simply got a wide 1 inch thick ash board, then cut it into narrow strips following the growth lines, then used these as arm blanks to be steam bent etc. Actually much less wasteful than using the wedge/froe/drawknife etc....

edit, should of mentioned he used a big old bandsaw to do the rip cut's.....


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## marcus (22 Oct 2013)

> I would be intersted to know of any woodworkers who make a living completely without machinery. In this category I exclude people who teach and write.



I think a few people in the green-wood working scene manage it. Green-wood chair makers, pole lathe turners, bowl turners etc.


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## marcus (22 Oct 2013)

> But in any case its not either/or. Almost everybody (including Brown) does a bit of both. The important things are first, not to lose sight of how useful hand tools are and assume that a machine or gadget is the only modern way, second to recognise how much machines alter products - not just as alternative tools but a whole other area of craft skill and design.



Agree. If you can use both machines and hand-tools to your advantage (rather than to the machine's advantage) then you have the best of both worlds. 

I think there is a lot to be said for starting out with only hand tools when you are learning, because you then find out how nice handmade things can be, and afterwards it may be less easy to allow machines to dictate everything. Also machines can make you lazy, and once you have them there is less incentive to learn to use hand tools really efficiently, and you may never realise how quick and flexible they can be.... And as bugbear says, if there is no need to earn a living from it you can use whatever you want. 



> second to recognise how much machines alter products - not just as alternative tools but a whole other area of craft skill and design.



Yes!


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## Cheshirechappie (22 Oct 2013)

One thing John Brown doesn't explicitly say, but implies, is that working by hand making furniture pretty well forces you to make lasting items. 

One capacity machines have is the ability to turn out items of lesser quality faster and cheaper than can be done by hand, thus leading to quicker obsolescence. Kitchens are a case in point - a small factory can churn out particle board kitchen cabinet carcases at a spectacular rate. They don't really last though - there's a sort of acceptance that ten years is about the 'normal' life for a modern fitted kitchen. Not quite the same approach as the old dresser and scrubbed-top table that would last a couple of generations. Flat-pack furniture in general follows the same trend.

I wouldn't suggest that either approach are 'right' or 'wrong'; furnishing a house with just the basics would be a very expensive business if only hand-made stuff were available. However, there is a bit of a reaction against the impermanent nature of modern 'budget' furnishings. People in general do have a feel for items of longer-lasting nature, and also in general respect that quality comes at a cost. I think that's something Brown's writings reflect.


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## Jacob (22 Oct 2013)

Machines can make long lasting items too. It's not an essential feature of hand-making only. The extra cost wouldn't necessarily be that high. The trouble is they'd run out of customers! 
Obsolescence is essential for economic growth. If you have a non-stop production line the faster things end up as scrap the better. Whether or not we need continual economic growth is another question.


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## RogerP (22 Oct 2013)

Cheshirechappie":3ils4tst said:


> ......... They don't really last though - there's a sort of acceptance that ten years is about the 'normal' life for a modern fitted kitchen. Not quite the same approach as the old dresser and scrubbed-top table that would last a couple of generations. Flat-pack furniture in general follows the same trend.........


That's probably longer than many folk need or want. Fashions change and the sheep that follow fashion must keep up.

Examples:

House across they road from me has changed owners several times is the last 18 years and on each occasion the kitchen and bathroom have been stripped of perfectly good stuff and new installed.

The house next door has had two kitchens and bathrooms so far in the last 10 years and what do I see pull up at 8.00am this morning? Four blokes in two kitchen/bathroom fitter's vans! Been mayhem for the past 6 hours.

Sad bit is by time they've ripped the old out there's nothing worth me salvaging.


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## marcus (22 Oct 2013)

Cuts both ways, I got two sinks for the workshop, and worktops, and a load of tool storage cabinets when our neighbours re-did their kitchen.... 8)


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## Cottonwood (22 Oct 2013)

Jacob":1z6jey8f said:


> Obsolescence is essential for economic growth. If you have a non-stop production line the faster things end up as scrap the better. Whether or not we need continual economic growth is another question.



At one time I wouldnt have accepted that view, but I can these days :| . 
Check out the old machines by wadkins, robinsons etc, still up and running a century later and doing the job they were designed and built for....norris, spiers, a bit more durable than some crappy disposable rali effort. De skilling I think someone mentioned somewhere :!: 

LOL I think I read somewhere recently ikea's annually use 1/10th of the entire global timber supply, amazing when you see what boxy sh#te they turn it into. Perhaps it would make an interesting academic study, what proportion of ikea production consists of recycled "wood" material-theirs (or someone elses). I mean on top of that (sourcing the massive supply) theres the cost of the factories, the latest cnc machinery, the wages bill...the cargo ships, the fleets of wagons, the mega retail outlet-just to get you a pack of chipboard with sticky back plastic beech effect panels....
Thats why disposable tools are so popular, euphemistically called "consumables" should that be consumerables?. And why the so called recycling industry has developed in the last 10 years or so. I do own 2 maklita drill drivers and very excellent kit they are, but I doubt they will still be usable in 140 years time, unlike my disston saws...Old Henry built for quality, for him it was a social and spiritual priority. I guess he wanted to sell saws, but not on the basis of a tradesmen buying a new one every week or however often one buys a modern disposable these days. "Disposable" LOL the exact opposite of "attached to". Thats the thing with fashion, you never get attached to it, its always changing...


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## Phil Pascoe (22 Oct 2013)

Ikea apparently uses one percent of the world's timber - it's still a lot, though.


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## Cottonwood (22 Oct 2013)

phil.p":1ixg3xun said:



> Ikea apparently uses one percent of the world's timber - it's still a lot, though.



Well if thats true, I was misinformed...but your right even so its still a lot of wood-and it still gets made into boxy sh#te any way... :lol:


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## Nick Gibbs (24 Oct 2013)

Harry 48":bjpmpb60 said:


> I can remember John did articles for one of the woodworking magazines and very good they were but his continual rants about power tools made him unpopular with the tool advertisers. The question of hand or power tool in MHO is each to his own



I was editor of Good Woodworking for the first two or three years that John Brown was writing. As far as I know it is a myth that advertisers complained, but it may have been after my stint. I never heard any complaints. We were nervous about it, but I'm not sure anyone actually complained or threatened to take their advertising away. In fact I suspect they appreciated having such a thought-provoking editor. 

Asking John to write those columns stands out as the single wisest thing I have done as an editor, even better than launching various magazines. It is the only time in my career that I've been responsible for something that was a 'must-read' for so many readers, and a column that such a high proportion of readers would always turn to first.

I am currently working on an anthology of John's articles, trying to fit them into a outline he'd devised for a book, called The Anarchist Woodworker. He had intended the book to be called the Self-Sufficient Woodworker, but had changed the title for personal reasons. The interest here will get me going with the book of his articles. It's up to my daughter typing them in!!! I promise not to publish any white text on black. Actually I suspect it's the width of the column on Tony's site that makes it difficult to read as much as anything.

Nick


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## Nick Gibbs (24 Oct 2013)

Oh, and by the way, John didn't work only by hand. He worked without electricity. He had a tractor-powered bandsaw, and and hand-powered grinder. And he only made chairs, and very occasionally tables, but not many cabinets. When he did make cupboards they were often made from PAR softwood, and painted, so you can argue that he used planing machines (and mechanised saws), but didn't own them. Chairs are much easier to make without machines than almost any other piece of furniture. Despite his passionate tone, he was also a pragmatist when it suited him!


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## Harry 48 (24 Oct 2013)

Sorry for getting it wrong about complaints from tool advertisers it all happened a few years ago I thought Johns articles where very thought provoking and a hot topic in readers letters. I'm glade you are try to finish the book it will be a worthwhile project. You do not get many people these days who live by there convictions as John Brown did


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## Paul Chapman (24 Oct 2013)

Nick Gibbs":20tiva7u said:


> I am currently working on an anthology of John's articles, trying to fit them into a outline he'd devised for a book, called The Anarchist Woodworker.



I look forward to seeing that, Nick. I have John's book on chairs and found it compulsive reading.

Cheers :wink: 

Paul


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## Nick Gibbs (24 Oct 2013)

Don't worry. It might have happened later, and it's a rumour I've often heard. Perhaps John started the whisper himself!!!


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## Harry 48 (24 Oct 2013)

Nick can you remember how long ago the articles where the published


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## Nick Gibbs (24 Oct 2013)

John stopped writing a couple of times, but his final one was in December 2002. He had two really good phases. Right at the beginning in about 1993 (I still go tingly when I read his first article - I must have realised I was onto something), and then a three or fours later when Phil Davy and Pete Martin were running the magazine and John did his Anarchist Woodworker series, and had really got into his stride.


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## marcus (24 Oct 2013)

I'm not the all time Krenov fan but I do think that comparing his approach to John Brown's is interesting. Krenov's work is all about sensitivity, subtlety and craft in the best sense of the word, it is high quality, and obviously 'hand-crafted' — no one could accuse him of making things that look like they were made in a factory. And yet, in spite of his obsessive hand plane making and using, he also used machines a lot. 

Rather like David Pye he had no time for romanticising hand work. Somewhere I think he says that the worst thing about avoiding machines altogether is that the person who pays for you to spend hours doing things that can be done in minutes is the client, and this is not fair just so that you can feel a certain way about your working day.

I'm interested in what John Brown says about "tell people you are making by hand and they will come and buy from you", because it is essentially selling a mystique, a feeling. It is loading up the product with all sorts of appealing associations that don't have nearly as much to do with the product you are trying to sell as you might want to believe. Which is modern marketing in a nut-shell, and not so far from the ways of the world that he rails against as he may have liked to think.

When I switched from 10% machines 90 % hand tools to 60% machines 40% hand tools, the look and feel of the work didn't change at all, only the price I needed to charge for it changed. It still had the softness and warmth (in my eyes anyway!) and still felt handmade. Which was a bit chastening to be honest. However I know that if I switched to 100% machines the work would suffer, and ultimately it is the work that matters, not my ideas about it or how I want to feel about doing it. As David Pye said, the way to judge a workman is by his work, by the things he produces.


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## Jacob (24 Oct 2013)

Hmm. Have to say I'm not the slightest bit interested in Krenov (except as a phenomenon) so I couldn't begin to compare or contrast him with J Brown. But I do like Brown's chairs and that whole area of trad and vernacular stuff. Must pop in to St Fagans again sometime soon.


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## marcus (24 Oct 2013)

> I do like Brown's chairs and that whole area of trad and vernacular stuff



Me too! They're very good chairs indeed.


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## Cheshirechappie (24 Oct 2013)

Jacob":603r7f4d said:


> Hmm. Have to say I'm not the slightest bit interested in Krenov (except as a phenomenon) so I couldn't begin to compare or contrast him with J Brown. But I do like Brown's chairs and that whole area of trad and vernacular stuff. Must pop in to St Fagans again sometime soon.



I think the point about 'trad and vernacular' stuff is that it tended to be very pragmatic - using simple tools and readily available materials to make (usually) simple, unadorned functional pieces; items of necessity rather than items of show. Such work had to be done to a tight budget, hence the readily available material and small capital investment in equipment. Sometimes, the results are plain or even downright ugly, sometimes the pared-down nature gives them a dignified beauty.

Krenov worked at the other end of the scale. His pieces were primarily for show. He put great effort into finding rare and beautiful materials, and spent much time showing the natural beauty of those materials to best effect. Whilst both he and John Brown were both fine craftsmen, I don't think their approaches were remotely similar.

Krenov did work analogous to high art - Brown did work analogous to pop art. Both are perfectly valid.


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## Jacob (24 Oct 2013)

Cheshirechappie":171n2dwj said:


> ..... ....
> Krenov did work analogous to high art .....


No way! :lol:


> Brown did work analogous to pop art. Both are perfectly valid.


I think you have it completely the wrong way around. Krenov was popular mainly on the amateur woodwork scene and is virtually unknown outside it. Brown, and vernacular products in general, have much more in common with the mainstream of the modern movement.


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## Cheshirechappie (24 Oct 2013)

Jacob":h1rd4om0 said:


> Cheshirechappie":h1rd4om0 said:
> 
> 
> > ..... ....
> ...



We'll have to agree to differ. I'm sticking with my opinion.

John Brown's chairs are supremely functional and easy on the eye - fine work in every way. Krenov's cabinets were sublime - and they were not bought by amateur woodworkers, either; they were bought by the sort of people who appreciate fine art, and could afford it. (No doubt I'll get a lecture on socialism now; however, it's a very good thing there are people about who can afford a high price for fine furniture and fine art, or neither would exist; and we'd all be the poorer for that.)


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## Nick Gibbs (24 Oct 2013)

I think it's hard to compare chairmakers and cabinetmakers. The disciplines are so far apart.

A visit to St Fagan's is thoroughly recommended, and to High Wycombe's Chair Museum. Some of the oldest chairs at St Fagan's may be hidden away, and you might need an appointment to see them. But the curator is really helpful. I have his details somewhere if anyone wants to contact him. Do email me.


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## marcus (25 Oct 2013)

> I think it's hard to compare chairmakers and cabinetmakers. The disciplines are so far apart.



That is true, but in the article John Brown doesn't make that distinction — in fact rather the opposite. It's pretty clear that he's talking about all wood crafts, including cabinet making. And to me this points to the heart of the problem with the article — it is not a reasoned argument, it is a polemic. It expounds and gesticulates and presses all the right emotional buttons, as polemics do, which makes it that little bit harder to notice that what is actually being said is riven with half-truths, avoided complexity and nuance and, in places, downright falsehood. And then you learn that the chap used PAR for his cabinets — in other words was happy for some kid in a factory to wear the 'monkey suit', and be subjected to the noise and the dust, while he works away quietly in his peaceful workshop lecturing other people from his high horse. I think one is justified in stopping reading at that point. Which is a shame, as the chairs themselves are good, and there are also, here and there, nuggets of truth in what he is saying.


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## bugbear (25 Oct 2013)

marcus":31vgwzyc said:


> > I think it's hard to compare chairmakers and cabinetmakers. The disciplines are so far apart.
> 
> 
> 
> That is true, but in the article John Brown doesn't make that distinction — in fact rather the opposite. It's pretty clear that he's talking about all wood crafts, including cabinet making. And to me this points to the heart of the problem with the article — it is not a reasoned argument, it is a polemic. It expounds and gesticulates and presses all the right emotional buttons, as polemics do, which makes it that little bit harder to notice that what is actually being said is riven with half-truths, avoided complexity and nuance and, in places, downright falsehood. And then you learn that the chap used PAR for his cabinets — in other words was happy for some kid in a factory to wear the 'monkey suit', and be subjected to the noise and the dust, while he works away quietly in his peaceful workshop lecturing other people from his high horse. I think one is justified in stopping reading at that point. Which is a shame, as the chairs themselves are good, and there are also, here and there, nuggets of truth in what he is saying.



Indeed. People claiming to tell the simple truth are surprisingly prone to being dishonestly selective. The real world has a nasty habit of being significantly complex.

One is reminded of Ralph Waldo Emerson - "The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons"

BugBear


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## Jacob (25 Oct 2013)

marcus":1jr93fxx said:


> > I think it's hard to compare chairmakers and cabinetmakers. The disciplines are so far apart.
> 
> 
> 
> That is true, but in the article John Brown doesn't make that distinction — in fact rather the opposite. It's pretty clear that he's talking about all wood crafts, including cabinet making. And to me this points to the heart of the problem with the article — it is not a reasoned argument, it is a polemic. It expounds and gesticulates and presses all the right emotional buttons, as polemics do, which makes it that little bit harder to notice that what is actually being said is riven with half-truths, avoided complexity and nuance and, in places, downright falsehood. And then you learn that the chap used PAR for his cabinets — in other words was happy for some kid in a factory to wear the 'monkey suit', and be subjected to the noise and the dust, while he works away quietly in his peaceful workshop lecturing other people from his high horse. I think one is justified in stopping reading at that point. Which is a shame, as the chairs themselves are good, and there are also, here and there, nuggets of truth in what he is saying.


Yes it is a polemic. If you look for a closely reasoned argument you will be disappointed and miss the point, which is a shame. What do you want, a manifesto and ten commandments?
He wasn't at it all that long and he was finding out, just like the rest us. "Work in progress" you might say.
I noticed his quote from Norman Potter, never heard of him. Got the book, and another one. Another eccentric with his life as a learning process. Interesting stuff. More eccentric nutters the better IMHO!


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## Jacob (25 Oct 2013)

Cheshirechappie":1y2ck6u9 said:


> ...........
> John Brown's chairs are supremely functional and easy on the eye - fine work in every way. Krenov's cabinets were sublime - and they were not bought by amateur woodworkers, either; they were bought by the sort of people who appreciate fine art, and could afford it. (No doubt I'll get a lecture on socialism now; however, it's a very good thing there are people about who can afford a high price for fine furniture and fine art, or neither would exist; and we'd all be the poorer for that.)


What a shockingly elitist thing to say!
Ordinary people appreciate fine art too. Having loadsa dosh doesn't mean you have good taste - usually the opposite in fact. 
Van Gogh sold one painting in his lifetime. Shakers made their stuff for their communities (communists! :roll: ). 
There is a vast world of high class art, craft work, music, food, etc. etc. produced by and for ordinary people who don't need patronage from the wealthy. The fact that classy objects have high prices doesn't necessarily benefit the maker in his lifetime - it's just surplus cash speculating on potential assets. Doesn't benefit the community to have stuff owned and stashed away by the wealthy.
Roll on the revolution!


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## AndyT (25 Oct 2013)

Nick Gibbs":3pae7un1 said:


> I think it's hard to compare chairmakers and cabinetmakers. The disciplines are so far apart.
> 
> A visit to St Fagan's is thoroughly recommended, and to High Wycombe's Chair Museum. Some of the oldest chairs at St Fagan's may be hidden away, and you might need an appointment to see them. But the curator is really helpful. I have his details somewhere if anyone wants to contact him. Do email me.



That's great advice, but before setting out on a long journey... all the indoor galleries are *closed* at present while they rebuild the exhibition part of the museum - more info here - http://www.museumwales.ac.uk/en/stfagans/.

But there are still some great examples of the sort of traditional work that John Brown helped bring people's attention to, in context, in the cottages. Here are three of my favourites from a visit this summer:


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## marcus (25 Oct 2013)

> What do you want, a manifesto and ten commandments?



No, just for people to think things through a little more thoroughly before they start so comprehensively dismissing and denigrating the craftsmanship and life choices of other people. Doesn't seem too much to ask, even from 'eccentric nutters'.


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## Nick Gibbs (25 Oct 2013)

bugbear":gz59aoan said:


> People claiming to tell the simple truth are surprisingly prone to being dishonestly selective.



Good point. I loved John. He was like a second father to me. But he was selective. At his memorial one of his sons recounted how John's brother once dared to contest one of John's stories. "The trouble with you," John retorted with typical candour, "is that you will let truth get in the way of a good story." 

John got people thinking. He got people talking. There aren't many other woodworking writers who are still discussed with such emotion years after their death. He only wrote one book, and perhaps two dozen really good articles, many of which repeated similar material, but his impact was significant, and people who wrote to him generally received a generous reply. His heart was certainly in the right place, which perhaps is what he had in common with Krenov (and many others).


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## Cheshirechappie (26 Oct 2013)

Jacob":3psp1n3k said:


> Cheshirechappie":3psp1n3k said:
> 
> 
> > ...........
> ...



With respect, I think you've missed the point, which is nothing whatever to do with what John Brown's chairs or James Krenov's cabinets might be worth now, but what they were able to charge for them when they first made and sold them - and what they had to charge in order to make a living.

John Brown could not have afforded to buy his own chairs, and James Krenov could not have afforded to buy his own cabinets. Without people of higher disposable income, neither could have made a living as they did. It isn't a matter of whether or not people of ordinary means appreciated their work - they very clearly do - but whether they could afford to commission it in the first place. That, perhaps, is one of the areas in which John Brown's arguments fall down. By having us all return to the simple life, he destroys his own market.


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## Jacob (26 Oct 2013)

There'd be more people with disposable income if we had more redistribution of wealth. More people would be able to buy better stuff - the quality of products, and life itself for many people, would be greatly improved.
Some weird logic there about John Brown's arguments. The "simple life" generally implies better quality of stuff; hand made, home grown, etc. Think of the Shakers, or the various arts and crafts movements. 
His stuff wasn't that expensive - pricey like a lot of top end craft stuff, but not out of this world.
I don't think either of them need to be grateful to the plutocracy, probably quite the opposite. Markets are destroyed by allowing too much money and property to be held in too few hands.


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## Cheshirechappie (26 Oct 2013)

Jacob":376kl6zu said:


> There'd be more people with disposable income if we had more redistribution of wealth. More people would be able to buy better stuff - the quality of products, and life itself for many people, would be greatly improved.
> Some weird logic there about John Brown's arguments. The "simple life" generally implies better quality of stuff; hand made, home grown, etc. Think of the Shakers, or the various arts and crafts movements.
> His stuff wasn't that expensive - pricey like a lot of top end craft stuff, but not out of this world.
> I don't think either of them need to be grateful to the plutocracy, probably quite the opposite. Markets are destroyed by allowing too much money and property to be held in too few hands.



This is sliding too far into political theory - such matters are best left to other fora.

I stand by my previous comments. Others may judge for themselves


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## Nick Gibbs (26 Oct 2013)

Cheshirechappie":13mu8mg4 said:


> John Brown could not have afforded to buy his own chairs, and James Krenov could not have afforded to buy his own cabinets. Without people of higher disposable income, neither could have made a living as they did.



Patrons have always funded art. John liked to promote 'good enough' woodwork, but the market economy calls for craftspeople to 'improve', to excel, to beat their rivals. I don't think it really matters, except if it undermines the bold efforts of those of us with more meagre skills making simple items for our homes. It's a bit like the complexity of TV cooking: do the fancy chefs frighten off would-be cooks, and make them feel inferior, or do they inspire us to have a go?


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## Cheshirechappie (26 Oct 2013)

Nick Gibbs":2ubg38ya said:


> Cheshirechappie":2ubg38ya said:
> 
> 
> > John Brown could not have afforded to buy his own chairs, and James Krenov could not have afforded to buy his own cabinets. Without people of higher disposable income, neither could have made a living as they did.
> ...



Certainly agree that without patrons, we would have a lot less art (architecture, furniture, interior decoration, literature, music, theatre and many other things) available to us. Enlightened patronage has greatly enhanced society in general.

Not entirely sure that I agree with your analogy with TV cooking, which I think is more about entertainment than about promoting real food (Saint Delia excepted). Most TV culinary shows are just food porn, really. I'm not sure that what John Brown was promoting was wood porn.

I do, however, take your point about the market economy making demands on craftspeople to 'improve' their work. This does mean that to become good enough usually means many hours of practice, which in effect means working full time at it; or at least, doing the same thing often enough for it to become a routine, almost mechanical skill - so that a high standard of work can be achieved at speed. I don't really think that should intimidate the amateur, who's raison d'etre is slightly different - to have fun, and if things of quality result, that's a bonus. The amateur has the freedom to decide whether to become proficient in one branch of woodworking, or whether to just potter happily making sawdust.


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## Jacob (26 Oct 2013)

Cheshirechappie":1bsiw30n said:


> ....
> Certainly agree that without patrons, we would have a lot less art (architecture, furniture, interior decoration, literature, music, theatre and many other things) available to us. Enlightened patronage has greatly enhanced society in general......


This is one of the strangest comments I have ever read on this forum. Somewhat pathetic too.
In the real world the principle enlightened "patron" of the arts you list, (in fact civilisation itself, you could say), is "society", or the community. Usually involving a struggle with whoever holds financial or political power. Often these things are going on in spite of, not because of, the powers that be. 
Wealthy "patrons" make a mark by gathering the creative products of the community into one place, but impoverishing the community at large. For instance most of the old large estates and country houses (full of art and architecture) are built on slavery and greed. The people who did the work mainly lived in poverty.


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## Cheshirechappie (26 Oct 2013)

Jacob":1zm9h0sv said:


> Cheshirechappie":1zm9h0sv said:
> 
> 
> > ....
> ...



Jacob - other fora are available for discussion of political theory.


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## Nick Gibbs (26 Oct 2013)

Cheshirechappie":1lch7ceu said:


> Not entirely sure that I agree with your analogy with TV cooking, which I think is more about entertainment than about promoting real food (Saint Delia excepted). Most TV culinary shows are just food porn, really. I'm not sure that what John Brown was promoting was wood porn.



I didn't really mean that. I meant that some home woodworkers might feel inadequate comparing their pieces to work produced by patron-funded professionals. I just like the idea of people making tables and chairs because they need tables and chairs and enjoy the process of making, whatever the results are like, and don't feel intimidated. I compared it to cooking only because I remember some research that says the plethora of cooking programmes has put people off cooking at home because they feel intimidated. I'm not sure if it's true. And I wonder if that's true of woodwork, and may explain why making jigs & devices & benches can be more popular than making furniture, because no one sees your jigs and you don't have to be frightened of exposing your creativity.


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## Cottonwood (26 Oct 2013)

Cheshirechappie":3u4r6lfm said:


> Jacob":3u4r6lfm said:
> 
> 
> > Cheshirechappie":3u4r6lfm said:
> ...



Sorry old cheshirechap, but when you start to talk about the high value of so called "enlightened patronage" etc etc, then you are entering the realms of political theory yourself..... :roll: If you dont see that you are perhaps a bit naive.


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## Phil Pascoe (27 Oct 2013)

No, it was a statement of fact, not theory. The whys and wherefores are irrelevant to the truth of the statement.


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## Jacob (27 Oct 2013)

phil.p":xvvvyh0r said:


> No, it was a statement of fact, not theory. The whys and wherefores are irrelevant to the truth of the statement.


Not it wasn't a statement of fact and the why's and wherefores are highly relevant and very interesting. 
Perhaps the most important feature of vernacular design, as emulated by John Brown and others, is precisely that it _didn't_ have wealthy patrons. It was ordinary stuff produced by the people, for the people, and often as cheaply as possible.
Wealthy patrons produced extravaganzas such as the high end of the mahogany trade, which by and large are not that interesting - display of wealth being the main objective.


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## AndyT (27 Oct 2013)

Jacob, I think I see what you are saying there. Vernacular design, first time round, produced the sort of work I illustrated with the Welsh chairs at St Fagan's. Made using minimal materials, scavenged locally, few tools and no elaboration. The sort of thing a farm labourer could afford to furnish his cottage. 

But the difference comes when anyone tries to draw on the tradition in modern times and wants to make a living doing so. 

The demand for such 'simple' designs is not to be found among the poor, who in the 80s when John Brown was working would have been more likely to shop at MFI. And because a craftsman, even one living quite frugally, expected a much higher price for his work, he needed to find a different sort of customer. Not someone poor, but someone willing to pay more than the price of a factory-made chair, because they appreciated the design and the craftsmanship. 

That's the same paradox that hit the Arts and Crafts makers a century earlier - by following vernacular design, or a re-imagining of it, they ended up making luxury goods.


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## Jacob (27 Oct 2013)

There are plenty of people who don't have a lot of cash but who have good taste and will make an effort to buy good quality stuff and support the creative industries as a whole
I've been in the "craft" business for 40 years or so, and know this to be true.
Oddly enough we used to sell our stuff through the same gallery as J Brown - "Workshop Wales" in Fishguard, but this was before his time I think (70s) and I wasn't aware of him then, though I was certainly aware of Welsh trad furniture and managed to pick up a few items myself, in spite of being permanently skint.


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## Nick Gibbs (27 Oct 2013)

Good points, Andy. I'm sure it's the result for every maker through time, one way or another. Craftsman of yore would surely have tried to sell to the squire, and doffed caps and whatever needed to be done to get the gig.

Of course, people are not necessarily paying just for the product itself, but for being part of the maker's craft, at least in their minds. They are searching for 'flags' to indicate their wealth, and they like the idea of associating themselves with the knarly craftsman who works without electricity. It's all about marketing. And perhaps, philanthropically, buyers also want to help the maker and keep the craft alive, possibly because it makes them feel good to be doing something good. There's a fantastic book called The Origins of Virtue by Matt Ridley that asks why, if we are entirely self-orientated (as indicated by The Selfish Gene), do we do seemingly friendly acts like patronage?


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## Cottonwood (27 Oct 2013)

phil.p":3sem2jnr said:


> No, it was a statement of fact, not theory. The whys and wherefores are irrelevant to the truth of the statement.



What statement of fact?? :lol: :lol: The comment he made was an opinion, hes just uncomfortable when it gets challenged, and wants to shut it down "because its political theory" 



Cheshirechappie":3sem2jnr said:


> .....without patrons, we would have a lot less art (architecture, furniture, interior decoration, literature, music, theatre and many other things) available to us. Enlightened patronage has greatly enhanced society in general.



This is nothing more than the bog standard old chestnut that people (usually middle class) churn out to try to comfortably justify, rationalise and of course reinforce their own distorted view of the past existence of an allegedly rich and diverse cultural heritage as a valid and decent cultural phenomenon-one that was inconveniently based on the hegemony of the governing class, and the exploitation of the labourers who produced all their nice pieces for them. LOL patrons who couldnt even "dress" themselves :roll: The thing with patrons is that they will always patronise you...


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## Nick Gibbs (27 Oct 2013)

Cottonwood":1lnvmhy0 said:


> The thing with patrons is that they will always patronise you...



I tend to agree. I wish we woodworkers could sell more items because we are solving a need, rather than having to spin some story of craftsmanship and artistic integrity to the rich, while 'needs' are fulfilled by mass-production. William Morris understood this, and yet the A&C Movement failed entirely.


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## marcus (27 Oct 2013)

> I wish we woodworkers could sell more items because we are solving a need, rather than having to spin some story of craftsmanship and artistic integrity to the rich, while 'needs' are fulfilled by mass-production.



Agreed! Although against that I've had a few clients who weren't particularly well off who have bought fairly expensive pieces — they saved up, or had a windfall and they wanted something really well-made for their home, and they went ahead and ordered. So I think these days the issue is often as much about people's taste and priorities as it is about anything else. Skip going on holiday for a while and do without a few high tech gadgets and you can probably afford to have something special made for your home. Of course this assumes you have a home, and are in the position to afford holidays and gadgets in the first place, but it certainly means that the option is open to a much wider range of people than a tiny elite at the top. I'm not going to argue whether or not that is a sensible choice for most people to make, but the choice is there if they want to take it. 

Also it's worth remembering that most well-made things will go through several hands before they are finished, so not only the first (and usually wealthiest) buyer benefits; some really quite good antique furniture is available at the moment at quite silly prices on ebay if you are willing to wait a bit. 

For me the ideal (and therefore probably fantasy) answer to this would be a world where everyone appreciates good craftsmanship, whatever their taste, and can see the value in trying to make the world a more beautiful place for everyone to enjoy. And where they can all afford to have a sensibly sized house that is homely, with one or two really high quality things in it for them to enjoy if they want them. In theory this doesn't seem too much to ask; it was more or less Morris's vision I think, but I'm not holding my breath for it....


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## Nick Gibbs (27 Oct 2013)

marcus":21ey74ch said:


> It was more or less Morris's vision I think, but I'm not holding my breath for it....



I'm very unconvinced about Morris. I prefer a philosophy that encourages people to live in homes full of things they've made themselves (which may or may not be beautiful, and may or may not be very useful), but are of their own hands. 

Many things sold by Ikea are relatively good looking and relatively useful and certainly inexpensive, and in a way fulfill Morris's vision, but they've put lots of craftspeople out of business and made it cheaper to buy furniture than make your own.


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## Jacob (27 Oct 2013)

Nick Gibbs":odpe4ui0 said:


> ...
> Many things sold by Ikea are relatively good looking and relatively useful and certainly inexpensive, and in a way fulfill Morris's vision, but they've put lots of craftspeople out of business and made it cheaper to buy furniture than make your own.


Not sure I agree. Ikea sell good design at very low prices, with a hidden cost of high depreciation due to rapid obsolescence . 
I think they are doing us a favour in some ways - people taking more interest in design who are also very aware of the quality issue, which in turn makes them appreciate trad quality. That's certainly the feeling I have got from my forays into furniture making. The mdf fitted kitchen industry has the same effect. It was definitely the case when I was doing period joinery - people knowingly pay premium prices to avoid having to buy plastic or tatty modern timber joinery.
I think it's a good time to be doing quality stuff - but not to expect Lord n Lady Snooty to turn up in a roller - your clients most likely will be ordinary people making careful decisions.
If you hang about hoping for rich clients you could end up having to run courses, or selling DVDs about sharpening and similar b.....x. :lol:

PS IKEA customers may not know at first that it's mostly junk, but they will after a few purchases. A very useful learning curve!


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## Harry 48 (27 Oct 2013)

John Brown may be gone but certainly not forgotten and I think he would have loved this debate as agent provocateur agree with him or not he started a conversation that has been going on for years


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## Paul Chapman (27 Oct 2013)

Nick Gibbs":i35jq884 said:


> I prefer a philosophy that encourages people to live in homes full of things they've made themselves (which may or may not be beautiful, and may or may not be very useful), but are of their own hands.



That's rather fanciful, Nick. Many people today would struggle to make egg on toast, let alone a dining room suite :lol: 

Cheers :wink: 

Paul


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## Phil Pascoe (27 Oct 2013)

phil.p":1oligzsb said:


> No, it was a statement of fact, not theory. The whys and wherefores are irrelevant to the truth of the statement.


I appologise, I should have been more clear - I was referring to the first part of the statement, not the second.
Great works of music, architecture, art, etc did not appear out of the ether, or because of the benevolence of highly skilled people - they only exist because someone paid for them. That is a fact not a political statement or argument. The whys and wherefores may be.


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## Cheshirechappie (27 Oct 2013)

Nick Gibbs":k8mlihcg said:


> Cheshirechappie":k8mlihcg said:
> 
> 
> > Not entirely sure that I agree with your analogy with TV cooking, which I think is more about entertainment than about promoting real food (Saint Delia excepted). Most TV culinary shows are just food porn, really. I'm not sure that what John Brown was promoting was wood porn.
> ...



One thing I think every amateur woodworker with a few years of practice will be familiar with is the casual request from family members and friends anong the lines of, "Ooo, that's nice! My sister is getting married next week. Could you knock up a coffee table for me as a wedding present?"

You are usually met with baffled incomprehension when you say it'll take a couple of months, not a week, and it'll cost them a hundred pounds or so for materials. "But I can get one from IKEA off the shelf for half that."

At this point, you have to decide whether to try explaining the differences between hand-making in your spare time and mass production, or just sighing and changing the subject. 

It's a world of instant everything. Instant news. Instant food. Instant entertainment. There was a post on this forum a few days ago criticising a major woodworking retailer because an mail order placed with standard postal delivery didn't arrive the next morning. Against that background, and bearing in mind that most people grow up and go through their education without having the chance to make something, how on earth do you explain the patience and complexity of a craft, much less get people to actually take it up themselves, even on a basic scale? Given that most of us amateurs work wood as a relaxation, it becomes easier to just retreat to your shed and potter about. No stress, no deadlines. Just fun. 

So, we read John Brown's articles and say, "Yep. Spot on. Good on him for doing his own thing. Now, I think I'll just potter off and make some nice handles for my bootfair chisels, or see if I can get a better edge on my smoothing plane iron, or maybe make another toolbox....."


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## Jacob (27 Oct 2013)

phil.p":30240v8x said:


> .....
> Great works of music, architecture, art, etc did not appear out of the ether, or because of the benevolence of highly skilled people - they only exist because someone paid for them......


Except for the ones which weren't paid for. Van Gogh sold one painting in his lifetime. The "creative urge" drives a lot of people, with getting paid a long way down the line. People on this forum for starters? Others do a lot for it's own sake, or for the community. Some spectacular efforts (cathedrals etc) were community projects with unpaid work. Choirs, orchestras abound with very little or no pay.
The idea that we should be grateful to rich people for our culture is really very silly.


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## RossJarvis (27 Oct 2013)

marcus":2g7t920b said:


> For me the ideal (and therefore probably fantasy) answer to this would be a world where everyone appreciates good craftsmanship, whatever their taste, and can see the value in trying to make the world a more beautiful place for everyone to enjoy. And where they can all afford to have a sensibly sized house that is homely, with one or two really high quality things in it for them to enjoy if they want them. In theory this doesn't seem too much to ask; it was more or less Morris's vision I think, but I'm not holding my breath for it....



Very well put.


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## RossJarvis (27 Oct 2013)

Jacob":15ku9vkq said:


> phil.p":15ku9vkq said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Another good point and I agree with most of this and was thinking along similar lines. I might moderate the last statement by saying that whilst there are rich people, whether that is or is not a good thing, we should appreciate if they use their wealth to the benefit of the community. As long as it is honestly and generously given and not just some display of their superiority. Some are rich because they are parasites, some just happen to be born or end up that way.


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## Jacob (27 Oct 2013)

Cheshirechappie":3fm5uboe said:


> ……..
> At this point, you have to decide whether to try explaining the differences between hand-making in your spare time and mass production, or just sighing and changing the subject. ……...


Or if you seriously want to get into the business - have a look around for the best indication of the market price of similar things and charge them that. If it's a good idea, something you'd like to make, then make 5 or 10 of them at the same time and sell them for whatever you can get. You've got to crawl before you can walk!


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## Cheshirechappie (27 Oct 2013)

Jacob":307nirgv said:


> Cheshirechappie":307nirgv said:
> 
> 
> > ……..
> ...



Oh FFS. Read the whole post before you reply, Jacob. I was talking about the amateur woodworker, not the aspiring professional.


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## Jacob (27 Oct 2013)

Cheshirechappie":2yo6nbjn said:


> Jacob":2yo6nbjn said:
> 
> 
> > Cheshirechappie":2yo6nbjn said:
> ...


Hence the "Or if.."


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## richarnold (27 Oct 2013)

Just thought this may interest a few of you.
I think this is a classic example of the Cotswold group keeping a vernacular craft alive to the present day, and I personally don't feel the prices are aimed at just the elitist few. 

http://www.lawrencenealchairs.co.uk/index.html
Cheers, Richard


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## Phil Pascoe (27 Oct 2013)

I doubt Michelangelo painted the Cistine Chapel in the lunch breaks from his day job. I doubt that orchestras would exist without concert halls - which someone else paid for (they also used music which the composer more often than not had been paid to write), and while local peasants might have given their labour free on major projects for decades (which I doubt), I doubt they paid for the stone.
Even today's community projects often depend on benefactors somewhere along the line - my nephew has been volunteering at a conservation trust for a couple of months, and he boasts about what a wonderful job they do for the community, free. It doesn't dawn on him that the only reason he can do it is that I'm feeding and housing him gratis.
There isn't a material cost involved in opening your mouth and singing, but there is in virtually everything else that's "free". It all gets paid for somewhere. Whether "we should be grateful to rich people for our culture" or not is a different discussion.


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## Paul Chapman (27 Oct 2013)

richarnold":346c9j18 said:


> I personally don't feel the prices are aimed at just the elitist few.



Very nice work but he'll never be rich at those prices if he's only producing two or three chairs a week. Just about making enough to get by, I should think.

Cheers :wink: 

Paul


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## Cottonwood (27 Oct 2013)

phil.p":2loyksos said:


> I doubt Michelangelo painted the Cistine Chapel in the lunch breaks from his day job. I doubt that orchestras would exist without concert halls - which someone else paid for (they also used music which the composer more often than not had been paid to write), and while local peasants might have given their labour free on major projects for decades (which I doubt), I doubt they paid for the stone.
> Even today's community projects often depend on benefactors somewhere along the line - my nephew has been volunteering at a conservation trust for a couple of months, and he boasts about what a wonderful job they do for the community, free. It doesn't dawn on him that the only reason he can do it is that I'm feeding and housing him gratis.
> There isn't a material cost involved in opening your mouth and singing, but there is in virtually everything else that's "free". It all gets paid for somewhere. Whether "we should be grateful to rich people for our culture" or not is a different discussion.



Michaelangelo schmangelo, why on earth is that overrated old darling always qouted high on the cognosceinti top 10 lists as the epitome of culture?? Its the same old chestnut, the dogmatic assumption that european culture (art, theatre, opera, whatever) is a simply marvellous pheomenon and is the benchmark of high brow quality, regardless of how it was created in practical terms, and what it cost.
Your right, the peasants never paid for any stone, why? because they were uncouth philistines? No, simply because they were historically stripped of any claim to ownership of those sort of resources, and couldnt donate any even if they had wanted to-just in case you forgot. After events such as the enclosure acts, what little the peasant labouring class had access to was curtailed still further. It was Lord and Lady Addlesh#te and all the rest of the aristocrat leeches who "owned everything" servants, tradesmen, labourers, clergy, even the fish and animals, and woe betide any one foolish enough to challenge that cynically titled "natural order of things".... Agreed Phil, someone _did_ pay for all those wonderful, enlightening, culturally enriching articles.

Any way, to get back to the original subject, the ironic thing is that despite Mr Browns rantings about the failings of power tools, and the virtues of hand tools, the fact remains that he accomplished the most trickiest part of the chair build (making the bent arms) using a _power tool_ (large bandsaw) to prepare the arm stock, which as far as I know, no other chairmaker does. 
LOL Maybe Mr Brown was merely doing a bit of Malcolm Mclaren type publicity stunting with his writings, stir up and generate controversy to get known... :wink:


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## Nick Gibbs (27 Oct 2013)

Jacob":1bwt6mcf said:


> If it's a good idea, something you'd like to make, then make 5 or 10 of them at the same time and sell them for whatever you can get.



I like that approach. Repeat making is under-estimated in my opinion. It's during repetitive work that I always seem to learn the most, and have come to really enjoy it.


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## Jacob (27 Oct 2013)

Nick Gibbs":22mh2hv6 said:


> Jacob":22mh2hv6 said:
> 
> 
> > If it's a good idea, something you'd like to make, then make 5 or 10 of them at the same time and sell them for whatever you can get.
> ...


It's how most stuff is made. I don't know why woodworkers have got hung up on the "one off" idea. Potters fill a kiln, weavers keep going yard after yard, printmakers do runs, bakers fill an oven. Even totally hand-made stuff is made in batches. Turners would do it in dozens. As a rule it's probably not worth getting the kit out to do just one.
Christmas is coming - imagine making one mince pie at a time!


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## bugbear (27 Oct 2013)

I'm quite grateful to the Borgias for patronising Michelangelo. a whole sequence of unique works of Art, of the highest quality.

BugBear


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## Phil Pascoe (27 Oct 2013)

Paul Chapman":1liowhb2 said:


> richarnold":1liowhb2 said:
> 
> 
> > I personally don't feel the prices are aimed at just the elitist few.
> ...


I suspect a lot of parts are common to two or (many) more designs, in which case he probably makes 100 legs, 100 right hand arms, 100 back slats and so on, which speeds production. #-o I've just agreed with Jacob, and I've come over all faint.
Nice chairs, though, and certainly not a get rich quick scheme.


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## Jacob (27 Oct 2013)

:lol: 
It certainly does speed up production. I turned a lot of knobs and shaker pegs once. The first dozen or so every one was different and to get 2 the same would be quite painstaking. After a bit they roll off the lathe every one perfect and as you get into the swing of it you don't want to stop!


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## marcus (27 Oct 2013)

I think the reason that a lot of craft furniture makers don't batch, but do custom one-offs is that for many things (i.e. not trad chairs which are particularly suited to small scale batch production) we fall between two stools. We end up making things that, even being batched, are still a _lot_ more expensive than similar things made in a full-on factory in China, without them being obviously special enough to make it worth people paying the extra. So you are making a considerable financial outlay to make the things, but with a very high risk that they will not sell. And because they are much bulkier than, say, a potters pots, or a stack of cloth, you then have a real problem of where to store them in the meantime. And where do you sell them — shop space is expensive, and online is tricky as people are so adept at bargain hunting online now....

Not saying it's impossible, and it is easier to batch some things than others (trad style dining tables can work if you have somewhere to store them I think) but it's still an iffy proposition, particularly with large items. And with smaller items it can be even harder to show people where the value is in the price you have to charge compared to foreign factory-made things. Particularly when you realise that probably the vast majority of people are really not interested in quality, they are interested in something that does what they need, looks OKish, and is affordable, and that's about it.

So then maybe one can go to the top end of the market, and batch things with a real wow factor, but at this level even when batched the cost is pretty exorbitant. But if you also sell a personal service, where the client has some design input, and a relationship with the maker, and they are are getting something unique to them for all that money, the high price tends to make a bit more sense. So one tends to make custom one-offs. It's a fairly pragmatic way to go in the end, I don't think it has that much to do with not being willing to contemplate batch work in principle.


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## Nick Gibbs (27 Oct 2013)

Jacob":oqcs8oos said:


> I don't know why woodworkers have got hung up on the "one off" idea.



I don't know either. To return to the start of this thread, John Brown hated doing batches. I love it because you get faster and faster, and devise new techniques. I suspect he didn't like commissions, and preferred to make something as well as he could and see if anyone would buy it. Perhaps he needed that clear approval, rather than the slightly woolier relationship between maker and client when the piece is commissioned. I can understand that.


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## Nick Gibbs (27 Oct 2013)

We're doing a piece in Living Woods this month about the making of 'Van Gogh' chairs in Spain in the 1960s. Reportedly the makers could produce them in 15 minutes each, from the cleft log. Amazing photos. All done by hand, with one man producing components and the other assembling the chairs.


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## marcus (27 Oct 2013)

> Michaelangelo schmangelo, why on earth is that overrated old darling always qouted high on the cognosceinti top 10 lists as the epitome of culture??



I think for two reasons. Firstly because, whatever one thinks of the social setup at the time, he was in fact astonishingly good at making art. Secondly because of his role in the renaissance, which was after all a key part of the movement in Western culture away from superstition and religious dogmatism, and towards rationality, and questioning, and science — and which therefore played a fundamental role in bringing about the world we have to day. One can argue about whether or not that is a good thing, but it is a thing, and a significant one. Not bad for the cultural output of a few warring and fragmented city states.



> Its the same old chestnut, the dogmatic assumption that european culture (art, theatre, opera, whatever) is a simply marvellous pheomenon and is the benchmark of high brow quality, regardless of how it was created in practical terms, and what it cost.



It's possible to appreciate the good in Western art, and the positive contribution is has made, and its many accomplishments, without being blind to its very significant problems and contradictions, and the damage it has been a part of. Appreciating it does not automatically mean that you swallow it whole, or that you look down on the art of other cultures or feel superior to them. 

I think that probably the majority of people are not making the dogmatic assumption you assume they are, just because they say they enjoy Michelangelo's work. Most people are a bit more thoughtful than that.


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## Jacob (27 Oct 2013)

Nick Gibbs":xtnt057n said:


> We're doing a piece in Living Woods this month about the making of 'Van Gogh' chairs in Spain in the 1960s. Reportedly the makers could produce them in 15 minutes each, from the cleft log. Amazing photos. All done by hand, with one man producing components and the other assembling the chairs.


Sounds interesting. I might buy the mag. It's years since I last bought one - actually it was bought for me and had that inflatable woman made of plywood on the cover!

15 minutes? Woodworkers today - it'd take them longer than that to flatten their japanese waterstones. :roll:


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## RossJarvis (27 Oct 2013)

Jacob":2ctkzjwb said:


> 15 minutes? Woodworkers today - it'd take them longer than that to flatten their japanese waterstones. :roll:



Hmm, 15 minutes, not enough time to flatten the concrete slab I use to flatten my waterstones :?


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## Phil Pascoe (27 Oct 2013)

+1 30secs on a concrete coping stone. Job done.


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## marcus (27 Oct 2013)

> We're doing a piece in Living Woods this month about the making of 'Van Gogh' chairs in Spain in the 1960s. Reportedly the makers could produce them in 15 minutes each, from the cleft log. Amazing photos. All done by hand, with one man producing components and the other assembling the chairs.



I wonder how comfortable the chairs were. And whether the makers would have lived that life if they had the choice of another. Still it's good going!

Apparently in the old days of boatbuilding a team of a man and a boy had to turn out a clinker dinghy every two weeks for the yard to make money. 25 a year!! That's insanely fast. But in order to do that there has to be a whole infrastructure, and culture, and market behind it which is not there anymore. It's not so much about the skill of the man and the boy as it is about the social set-up and environment and circumstances which makes that skill possible to develop and maintain. It's a technology really, and it seems mind-blowing to us in the same way as the things 3d CNC can do would seem mind blowing to them. And of course they would struggle with the CNC every bit as much as we would struggle with the boatbuilding....


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## Nick Gibbs (27 Oct 2013)

marcus":2pq0139s said:


> I wonder... whether the makers would have lived that life if they had the choice of another.



Who knows. The agony of choice! I remember hearing an entrepreneur on Desert Island Discs or something explaining how they felt about their success. He or she said something along the lines: "Well I'm at the place now that I always wanted to be when I was at the stage, starting up and struggling, that I now realise I was happiest and wish I could be again!"

No idea which issue of LW had the inflatable plywood woman on the front!


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## marcus (27 Oct 2013)

> The agony of choice!



Easy to say living in a culture that allows most of us a good measure of it....


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## Nick Gibbs (27 Oct 2013)

Of course. But there is some truth in it.


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## Jacob (27 Oct 2013)

marcus":32x5oxpf said:


> ..... And whether the makers would have lived that life if they had the choice of another. ........


Ted Frost in "From Tree to Sea" waxes lyrical about the good old hard working days.
OK so life could be grim (it still can) but on the other hand if your had your health, good relationships with your family, fellow workers and the community, enough to eat and drink and somewhere comfortable to sleep etc. Perhaps add "youth" to the equation.


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## Nick Gibbs (27 Oct 2013)

Jacob":1qmuas1t said:


> Perhaps add "youth" to the equation.



Except perhaps older people were treated with a bit more care in the past and in different cultures. Or perhaps not.


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## marcus (27 Oct 2013)

> Ted Frost in "From Tree to Sea" waxes lyrical about the good old hard working days. OK so life could be grim (it still can) but on the other hand if your had your health, good relationships with your family, fellow workers and the community, enough to eat and drink and somewhere comfortable to sleep etc. Perhaps add "youth" to the equation.



I don't doubt it! I'm sure there were times and places where the traditional life was wonderful to be a part of, when certain factors all came together all in one place. It probably partly depended, as well, on the sort of person you were; we are all so different from each other, and some will thrive where others struggle and vice versa. But it could also be horrendous for everyone if the necessary factors shifted just a little. 

I know for sure that I would have gone nuts if I had been expected to spend my whole life turning identical chair parts or working a saw pit. I would probably have run away to sea and ended up in all sorts of bother as a result. Prospecting for gold on the Spanish Main maybe. Romantic thought. More likely to have been press ganged into the navy and hit by a cannonball....

But personally I'm convinced that the past is the past, and we can't go back there; you can't put the genie back in the bottle once it is is out. So we have to go on — hopefully gathering up some of the best of that past and taking it with us as we go....


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## bugbear (28 Oct 2013)

marcus":3fr8az42 said:


> It's possible to appreciate the good in Western art, and the positive contribution is has made, and its many accomplishments, without being blind to its very significant problems and contradictions, and the damage it has been a part of. Appreciating it does not automatically mean that you swallow it whole, or that you look down on the art of other cultures or feel superior to them.
> 
> I think that probably the majority of people are not making the dogmatic assumption you assume they are, just because they say they enjoy Michelangelo's work. Most people are a bit more thoughtful than that.



Just to expand that, it's possible to enjoy the beautiful buildings in Bristol without being in favour of a return to slavery.

BugBear


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## AndyT (28 Oct 2013)

bugbear":1ilzct0a said:


> Just to expand that, it's possible to enjoy the beautiful buildings in Bristol without being in favour of a return to slavery.
> 
> BugBear



Agreed. The same goes for the huge personal fortunes built on making and selling tobacco products, but without the philanthropy of the Wills family, Bristol would not have got its university when it did, nor would it have such good buildings. I suggest that the intelligent approach is to acknowledge the history, be open about the origins but keep and use the facilities. 

We do still have personal wealth being highly concentrated in the hands of a few. And some of those wealthy people do make themselves a second career of giving their money away to do good.


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## Jacob (29 Oct 2013)

Jacob":33lbi4px said:


> Nick Gibbs":33lbi4px said:
> 
> 
> > We're doing a piece in Living Woods this month about the making of 'Van Gogh' chairs in Spain in the 1960s. Reportedly the makers could produce them in 15 minutes each, from the cleft log. Amazing photos. All done by hand, with one man producing components and the other assembling the chairs.
> ...


Talking of repeats - this mornings paper reminded me that Van Gogh did lots of repeats of some of his best known works. 
Matisse did too. So did Stradivarius. And many other artists/craftsmen - repeating one by one, or in batches, or in print or casting runs.


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## Nick Gibbs (29 Oct 2013)

Which paper, Jacob?


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## Jacob (29 Oct 2013)

Nick Gibbs":3hyyh0j4 said:


> Which paper, Jacob?


Grauniad. Picture of 2 versions of Van Gogh sunflowers. Apparently he did 5.


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## Cottonwood (29 Oct 2013)

bugbear":11iawxor said:


> marcus":11iawxor said:
> 
> 
> > It's possible to appreciate the good in Western art, and the positive contribution is has made, and its many accomplishments, without being blind to its very significant problems and contradictions, and the damage it has been a part of. Appreciating it does not automatically mean that you swallow it whole, or that you look down on the art of other cultures or feel superior to them.
> ...


 Thats all very well, but those "beautful buildings" in Bristol couldnt have been created without slavery.....


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## Cottonwood (29 Oct 2013)

bugbear":290acoed said:


> I'm quite grateful to the Borgias for patronising Michelangelo. a whole sequence of unique works of Art, of the highest quality.
> 
> BugBear


 The borgias were corrupt criminals who made popes. They havent exonarated them selves by paying for some statues and pictures.


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## bugbear (29 Oct 2013)

I think (for a painter), there are two kinds of repetition. The first is a constant striving for perfection, or at least improvement.

This is more like repetitive practice than multiple production. I think Van Gogh's sunflowers come under this category, and certainly Mondrian's paintings appear to be a kind of striving towards a platonic ideal of colour and design.

The other kind is more commercial - Gainsborough did a lot of similar portraits; he did them because people commissioned them.

Both kinds are quite distinct from a bodger turning up for yet another day of making hundreds of chair legs the same as he made yesterday, and will make tomorrow.

BugBear


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## bugbear (29 Oct 2013)

Cottonwood":2ezj9ds7 said:


> bugbear":2ezj9ds7 said:
> 
> 
> > I'm quite grateful to the Borgias for patronising Michelangelo. a whole sequence of unique works of Art, of the highest quality.
> ...



What you say is quite true, but you're attacking a point I wasn't making.

BugBear


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## Jacob (29 Oct 2013)

bugbear":1b6lc8q8 said:


> .....
> Both kinds are quite distinct from a bodger turning up for yet another day of making hundreds of chair legs the same as he made yesterday, and will make tomorrow.
> 
> BugBear


If you spend a long enough time doing landscape paintings, portraits, turning chair legs, making mince pies, almost anything, you will get better at it.


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