Which course, Paul Sellers or Peter Sefton

[woodbrains]

Hello,

Ironically, it is because of IKEA and the like that 'ordinary' stuff, as you put it, is not done anymore. It doesn't matter how fast and sloppy I can make dovetails, I can't crank out stuff cheap enough for people to buy in preference to IKEA. Besides they look bad too, so even less chance of selling. So you make them fine by taking a bit more time and hopefully there is a slim market who will buy high quality.

Incidentally, you are wrong about those dovetails being for ordinary stuff for ordinary people. I've seen enough Cuban mahogany chests of drawers, with flame veneered drawer fronts, **** beads and drawer slips etc. for a high end Victorian market, with sloppy, overcut dovetails. It was just tolerated in those days, it simply isn't now. I have never seen antiques (perhaps very, very rarely) with dovetails as fine as those done as a matter if course by modern makers. You are backing a losing argument if you think we are ever going to go back to work like you seem to prefer.

For this reason, I think Peter Sefton's would be a more useful course to do. Or Chris Tribe for that matter, I know him personally and know him to be a fine craftsman. Perhaps you should sign up and find out how it is done these days.

Mike.

 

[Cheshirechappie]

Their you go, we shouldn't get thoughts above out station, ordinary people like us don't deserve fine stuff.


Pete

Not sure what point you are trying to make Pete.

We often have the same problem with your posts, Jacob!

 

[Racers]

Their you go, we shouldn't get thoughts above out station, ordinary people like us don't deserve fine stuff.


Pete

Not sure what point you are trying to make Pete.

According to you we shouldn't have fine quality tools or do fine quality work.

Maybe we should go back to the stone age, no point in advancing and striving to make things better.

People like nice things and like to make nice things, it seems like you have a complete reversion to improvement.

Pete

 

[iNewbie]

Come on Pete, when they made Cast Crucible Steel we all should have stuck with flint. Thats where we all went wrong.

 

[Jacob]

..... Perhaps you should sign up and find out how it is done these days.

Mike.

:lol: We all know "how (some people) think it is done these days" we are told over and over again - but we don't have to follow fashion if we don't want to. For some people it seems to be a moral crusade.

Perhaps you should keep your eyes open a bit and you would see that there is a huge middle ground between IKEA and, say, J Makepeace. It takes a bit of skill (design skill mainly) and ingenuity to find a niche between the cheapest and the most expensive but a huge number of people are in there doing it.
You could join them woodbrains, instead of sitting on the sidelines muttering disapprovingly and trying to "correct" the others. Get a life!

 

[sploo]

We do seem to have rather strayed from the original topic (of courses).

I am actually moderately interested in the current discussion, and I even think there might be merit in a thread that documented examples of old and new work (with contributions from both sides of the argument). Obviously it would always be possible to find good or bad examples of both old and new work, so sample size is important.

It does occur to me that antique furniture is likely to have used glues that may have perished, wood that has moved, and pieces that in general have taken use and abuse - so is it always valid to look at old pieces and assume they were sloppy from day one? Don't answer that - in this thread at least; let's take it to a new thread.

 

[Jacob]

One thing you can say for sure about old work is that it lasts!* That's something to take note of.

* explainer (in case woodbrain doesn't get it :roll: ); if it didn't last it wouldn't still be here.

 

[sploo]

One thing you can say for sure about old work is that it lasts!* That's something to take note of.

* explainer (in case woodbrain doesn't get it :roll: ); if it didn't last it wouldn't still be here.

But you don't know that new work doesn't last... unless you get a time machine :wink:

 

[Racers]

One thing you can say for sure about old work is that it lasts!* That's something to take note of.

* explainer (in case woodbrain doesn't get it :roll: ); if it didn't last it wouldn't still be here.

You can only say some of it lasts, or they would be massive piles of old furniture every where.

Pete

 

[bugbear]

One thing you can say for sure about old work is that it lasts!* That's something to take note of.

* explainer (in case woodbrain doesn't get it :roll: ); if it didn't last it wouldn't still be here.

You can only say some of it lasts, or they would be massive piles of old furniture every where.

Pete

Indeed - the extant old furniture is a self selecting sample. The sample is further skewed by expensive furniture being well looked after.

BugBear

 

[Jacob]

One thing you can say for sure about old work is that it lasts!* That's something to take note of.
* explainer (in case woodbrain doesn't get it :roll: ); if it didn't last it wouldn't still be here.

You can only say some of it lasts, or they would be massive piles of old furniture every where.

Pete

Yes you've nearly got it Pete!

...
Indeed - the extant old furniture is a self selecting sample. The sample is further skewed by expensive furniture being well looked after.
BugBear

Yes and no.
Valued (i.e. liked, well used, popular, etc) furniture is well looked after but this isn't the same as expensive. You see a lot of careful repairs done to quite ordinary stuff. My favourites are the little blacksmith made iron plates spanning broken joints in windsor chairs - sometimes beautifully done and quite inconspicuous - more like orthpaedic surgery than woodwork!.
On the other hand there was masses of meretricious expensive stuff made by Chippendale and everybody, much of which has disappeared without trace - except in the catalogues.

 

[Racers]

One thing you can say for sure about old work is that it lasts!* That's something to take note of.
* explainer (in case woodbrain doesn't get it :roll: ); if it didn't last it wouldn't still be here.

You can only say some of it lasts, or they would be massive piles of old furniture every where.

Pete

Yes you've nearly got it Pete!

...
Indeed - the extant old furniture is a self selecting sample. The sample is further skewed by expensive furniture being well looked after.
BugBear

Yes and no.
Valued (i.e. liked, well used, popular, etc) furniture is well looked after but this isn't the same as expensive. You see a lot of careful repairs done to quite ordinary stuff. My favourites are the little blacksmith made iron plates spanning broken joints in windsor chairs - sometimes beautifully done and quite inconspicuous - more like orthpaedic surgery than woodwork!.
On the other hand there was masses of meretricious expensive stuff made by Chippendale and everybody, much of which has disappeared without trace - except in the catalogues.

Masses of Chipendale? masses! I don't think so, care to come up with any numbers? evidence? or is it just a wet finger in the air job as usual.

Pete

 

[bugbear]

Valued (i.e. liked, well used, popular, etc) furniture is well looked after but this isn't the same as expensive. You see a lot of careful repairs done to quite ordinary stuff. My favourites are the little blacksmith made iron plates spanning broken joints in windsor chairs - sometimes beautifully done and quite inconspicuous - more like orthpaedic surgery than woodwork!.
On the other hand there was masses of meretricious expensive stuff made by Chippendale and everybody, much of which has disappeared without trace - except in the catalogues.

Masses of Chipendale? masses! I don't think so, care to come up with any numbers? evidence? or is it just a wet finger in the air job as usual.

Pete

There are more surviving Rolls Royces than Austin Allegros...

In fairness to Jacobs point, some Rolls Royces that were made have indeed been scrapped. :roll:

BugBear

 

[Peter Sefton]

Chippendale and his highly skilled craftsmen made top notch furniture, it was so desirable that local carpenters and joiners tried to replicate it, but often made a pair quality version. This was called Country Chippendale, this shows something which is still evident today, carpenters may not understand the quality of fine furniture or how to replicate it (not surprising it's a different trade). I am sure a lot of country Chippendale has gone most original remains.

Thus using a nail to cut fine dovetails rather than a sharp chisel, the finished job will show the difference even if Jacob cannot see it. I go back to my original point you can't cut fine dovetails with a fat cheap chisel.

As an aside when I was a journeyman maker working with experienced craftsmen from Gordon Russell's when they made a really good quality job they would always say "it's like a job in the town" it's a reference back to Chippendale makers from London town, as we country boys are just as good!

Cheers Peter

 

[Jacob]

There's a popular myth that town makers were copied in the country in an inferior sort of way.
If anything it was the other way around. Chippendale, Hepplewhite, Sheraton all were country furniture makers - drawn to town by the money. Paxton was a country boy and a gardener. Mackintosh was Glaswegian. And so on.
Richard Bebb goes on about it a lot - pointing out that there was imaginative and creative design and making going on all over the place - not just a feeble diaspora from the cities, and conversely, so-called "country" furniture (i.e. simple and utilitarisn) was just as likely to be made and bought in towns.
The Regional Furniture Society writes at length along the same lines.

PS re dovetailing with a nail - not to be recommended but would be possible if you were desperate, and nobody would know the difference (as long as you kept it sharp).

 

[bugbear]

The Regional Furniture Society writes at length along the same lines.

They might be the teensiest bit biased. :lol: The lowliest hand in an auction house can spot "Country Furniture" a mile off.

And Richard Bebb is making a living selling the stuff - we all know Jacob's view of how trust worthy a seller's opinion is of what he's selling.

BugBear

 

[woodbrains]

Hello,

I dunno what tripe you read Jacob, but innovation in art and design had always taken place in large towns. How else could it be? People where in close proximity, their workshops, factories, studios, pubs. This is how cross pollination of ideas took place. This is where Paris, New York, London etc, could keep in touch via ports and shipping, and art movements could evolve. Design filtered through to provincial towns and the countryside, several decades after the initial buzz flourished in the major towns. Yes, decades later, it was this slow. You see things like Art Deco architecture in provincial towns being built as de-rigour in the 1950's long after it was the height of fashion in big cities, and even then it was tinged with the local traditions that were hard to drop, or misunderstood as being of the style.

No one is saying country makers were any less skilled, but they simply were not at the cutting edge if innovation and their clients not as well heels as city dwellers. Does this ring true with anyone here, though no real excuse since we have the internet to inform us what is going on!

Mike.

 

[Cheshirechappie]

From my studies of furniture history (which are admittedly not formal), it seems that from the birth of 'fine' furnituremaking in the 18th century, the vast majority of both designers and makers worked in London (even if their origins were elsewhere), with a few exceptions such as Gillows of Lancaster. I think that's in part because the techniques were brought in by immigrants from France and Holland, both of which were far in advance of England in matters woodworking (and much else) in the 17th century, and they tended to gravitate to where the market was - generally where the money was. More recently, since about the 1960s the picture has reversed, with the best designer-makers being mostly outside London.

The picture for furniture of good, ordinary and cheap qualities is, of course, far more mixed. A few provincial firms tried their hands at copying 'fine' furniture (or interpreting from catalogues such as Sheraton and Hepplewhite), but whilst they were highly competent at good or ordinary wares, their lack of market meant they had little opportunity to develop the skills of 'fine' cabinetmakers.

It's worth bearing in mind that the market for 'fine' furniture has always been miniscule in comparison to the markets for good, ordinary or basic wares.

 

[woodbrains]

It's worth bearing in mind that the market for 'fine' furniture has always been miniscule in comparison to the markets for good, ordinary or basic wares.

Hello,

True, but it was the driving force for the changes in design and fashion. If it wasn't for the few wealthy clients wanting/coveting the new, we would not have such a wealth of design movements with all the varied forms and styles.

As to the market for fine furniture being miniscule, it might just be the only market left for handmade things. The ordinary stuff is well catered for with mass produced stuff, or imported tat.

Mike.

 

[Jacob]

.....The lowliest hand in an auction house can spot "Country Furniture" a mile off.....

But they can't necessarily tell where it was made. Demand for plain utilitarian furniture was as high if not higher in the towns.