The buzzword is Making Things

    The great thing about a blog is that you can say what you want without a magazine editor changing or messing up what you have written. The downside is that hardly anyone reads a blog unless you are a celeb. 

    Today's blog is about a true celeb in my life and that is my woodwork teacher. He more than anyone else has influenced my life - a true genius of a teacher and such is this man's modesty I could only find one Google result (below) about a Telegraph article about him riding a Royal Enfield Bullet in 2001. Curiously I owned one of those motorcycles as well as follow Howard in his footsteps and train at the legendary Shoreditch College as a Handicrafts teacher on leaving school. We were well ahead of the game teaching youngsters how to think creatively as well as use their hands. We were teaching design as an integrated part of Handicraft years before Design took over and eventually became embedded in Technology. The buzzword now is 'Making Things'. A bit late when the subject has been systemmatically dismantled over decades! 

    Howard Orme became woodwork master at Abbotsholme school as I entered the Lower Sixth form having failed Woodwork O level with the rest of the class under the previous uninspiring teacher who swiftly vanished. In the December resits I got 85% and two terms later Grade A at GCE A level (normally a two year course)! The thing about Howard, apart from him having a very glamourous young wife at this all boys' boarding school was that he was mildly eccentric and a damned good cabinetmaker as well as an inspiring teacher. Enthusiasm is what comes to mind and this certainly rubbed off, but he must have liked me and for someone who spent much of his school life in trouble that was quite something. 

    My father died when I was 17 and the headmaster gave me the day off lessons to be quiet and on my own. I took the day off fly fishing on the River Dove and feel no remorse in saying it was the first day of my freedom and so I guess Howard would have become a role model. He made learning woodwork fun and even gave me the keys to the woodwork shop one Friday night to make my first guitar. I worked throughout Friday and Saturday night and slumped over the bench around 4pm on the Sunday with one completed acoustic guitar. We had run out of French polish so I used shoe polish.  It was an exciting moment of truth to string the guitar and it sounded good. 

   Above all Howard was a superb craftsman and he would invite me to his flat to inspect his cabinets while his lovely young wife made coffee! Howard had just left the RAF and I guess he was about 23 years old when he joined the Abbotsholme teaching staff.

   On one occasion the headmaster brought some parents of a prospective new boy into the workshop. Howard and I were competing on mini crossbows we had made aiming at a poster of Edward Barnsley at the far end of the workshop. The headmaster was speechless but this was an independent progressive school and I was Howard's star pupil. 

    I dedicated one of my woodworking books to Howard Orme and later met up with him at Eton College where he took up a post in what he described as the Department of Maniacs (Mechanics).  I don't think Howard ever really knew how much he had influenced me and not just in a selfish way of my becoming a renowned designer maker but more importantly to hand on the gift of education and in particular the undervalued Practical Arts that was my particular vehicle for personal development and expression. The greatest reward and one more lasting than the acclaim of (transient) fame as performer is when out of the blue ten, twenty or thirty years on an ex pupil or student appears out of nowhere and says you helped them find their direction in life. Especially in the field of teaching when at the time you have no real measure of whether you are any good at all.

However, one thing for sure is that anybody in the business of education - a teacher, has no business there unless they have not just enthusiasm but a passion for what they are teaching. A university degree proving you are clever is not enough. 

Jeremy Broun with teacher Howard Orme at Abbotsholme School

Howard Orme and Jeremy Broun at Eton College where Howard taught

Howard Orme's Telegraph article:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/4753067/Typical-biker-Howard-Orme.html

Lost in the Myre

 Twitter, Flitter, Blog, Smog, Tweet, Ted, Gawker,  Flicker,  Bicker,  Facebook,  Faceless - it goes on and on just like university degrees, so many of them yet what are they worth? Who is the supreme champion of the grab your attention platform? Whoever it is today (Facebook Business page?) one thing for sure it won't be next year. There will be a new kid on the blog. In the time it has taken for some corners of society to understand what a blog is and finally succumbing to peer group pressure that they are less than inadequate not to use one, those in the know tell us the blog is out of fashion. Its been left behind. Even this blog is admittedly a cathartic exercise, with the deluded hope that one day a small iota of its drivel will be of use to some fellow inhabitor of this planet.

   I suspect I may be bookmarked for the 'Grumpy old men' folder but to quote a young teenage age girl's mother last Christmas when I led my street against the neighbouring street in an impromtu snowball fight. As the girl hit me fair and square on the snout, she screamed 'I got that old man'. Mother quickly reprimanded her ' Don't be rude, he's not an old man, well, if he is, he's a very young old man'.

Moral compass

   Professor Richard Dawkins reportedly says 'The Bible is good reading but an appalling moral compass'. What makes it good reading then prof?!

   I would disagree with this renowned atheist scientist who is implying that all religious doctrine is altogether bad for us!! I don't think faith or non-belief is the issue here but that the Christian code as stated in the Ten commandments in The Old Testament is hard to beat as a moral humanistic code or compass. Does Mr Dawkins suggest something better? 'Do unto others as you would have done unto yourself' and 'love your neighbour' is a lot better than the moral code that has taken over from church worship which is the television and namely the soaps that have millions of addicts and is socially indoctrinating. Whether The Bible is truth or a fairy story is neither here nor there if it serves a purpose, that purpose being to offer a guide. 

   I am no Christian in the claimed sense and am probably more an atheist now than an agnostic and do not have the arrogance of scientific knowledge or certainty about anything but I question those who pull down bricks without anything positive to rebuild with. It suddenly seems very fashionable to knock Christians and yet we have the hypocrisy (or fickleness) to celebrate an important Christian festival - Christmas with only one thing in mind to overindulge and over consume with money a lot of us don't have!  Playing Devil's Advocate it is curious the Bible has survived two thousand years of interpretation and ambiguity, even if it a human construct. The problem with science is it often leaves a vacuum!
  I think the late John Lennon is more convincing when he said 'whatever gets you through the night' and that is how I would view the tradition of leaving Gideons Bible in lonely hotels nationwide.

A community

    Many years ago, in fact in 1972 I was one of a dozen craftsmen and women who established the UK's first residential craft commune. I gave freely of my time and expertise as a 'carpenter' to help renovate the property in erecting 22 ledge and brace doors and a long refectory table with a dozen or so Glastonbury chairs all in the spirit of this exciting new co-operative and just in return for my food. My workshop rent was nominal and I recall there was a budget for modestly equipping the woodworking workshop where I was obliged to allow members of the public learn alongside me whilst I attempted to make a living creating my furniture designs. We had a communal gallery and the dream was that a van would collect our craft wares on a Friday and take them away and sell them. 

   The commune was called "The Dove Centre of Creativity" not far from Glastonbury and we were written about in the Colour Supplements as a pioneer model. The twelve craftspeople including myself agreed to a modest percentage markup on our produce to be sold through the commune's gallery. Very soon the harsh reality of commercial survival kicked in and a two-tier markup was introduced by the commune's charismatic leader whereby the 'strong crafts' such as furniture making supported the weaker crafts such as printmaking. Some craftspeople stayed in bed til late whilst others were disciplined early risers. It was inherently unfair that one craft should support another nor was it correct that one craft was stronger than another as it all boiled down to the individual.

    I had invested my time in this venture (and others had given all their savings) and although it was in my heart I found I was actually restricted from making a living by needing to sell outside the commune, yet prevented, and I was forced to leave. I was the first which was quite painful and at the time I was accused of abandoning the philosophy and spreading panic around the centre as others were soon to follow. It was a naive dream but I have no regrets and amicably met up for a re-union twenty five years later and made a film about it called "Silver Dove".
    Interestingly we were in theory a community of like-minded people, all creatives, but very quickly it fell apart and individual private enterprise and self-determination took over. When David Cameron walked away from the Eurozone summit it kind of reminded me of when I was the first to see the reality behind the dream all those years ago. But even then there was no certainty ahead.

Jeremy Broun at the Dove Centre in 1972

The table and chairs built by Jeremy Broun at the centre

The Dove Centre of Creativity

Peer Group Pressure

    One thing I learned at a fairly young age is that peer group pressure can be limiting to positive outcomes and often paradoxically the weakest influence. Fortunately when I was young it was not the dominant almost obsessive force it seems to be today and one so entrenched in consumerism. 

    However, if David Cameron felt alone amongst 26 other nations it somewhat presumes the outcome of their coherence or fate. Time will tell and he may have seen the writings on the wall. I don't quite understand how he can be held responsible (by his deputy Nick Clegg) for a bad outcome when the will of France, Germany and others is to diminish the power of the City and that by setting our own rules we have a better chance of regulating that absolutely vital sector. Cameron could influence but not determine the outcome. What would others have brought away from the table and Labour would not declare its hand at all. We will become 'isolated' if we have nothing to sell but determining our own fate I sense is better and who knows we may pull together better as a nation and mobilise our remarkable resources without the increasing madness of European bureacracy. Human nature anywhere around the world is to look after its own first and that is what we are doing but the British always seem perverse. Clegg agreed to what Cameron was asking for at the Summit the week before! 

    I took the trouble today to watch BBC Parliament long enough to get a feel of its climate and thoroughly disagree with their BBC political commentator who later said on the Six O'Clock News that labours jeers at the absence of Nick Clegg dominated the session. Rubbish, if anything or anyone dominated it was Cameron who was extremely clear, firm and straight forward in his arguments and showed the kind of leadership we scream out for and that many in the House stood up and applauded. 

    Another surprise today from one of our other reverred institutions - the politically correct Guardian newspaper was the admission of the journalist Nick Davis that he may have got it wrong about the News of The World phonehackers deleting the Milly Dowler voicemails. Police intelligence eventually revealed the voicemail may have been automatically deleted the messages!! You mean nobody at the time considered that most telephone answering devices hold a limited number of messages before they are chronologically deleted? Interesting whether the weight of this small factual discrepancy is significant in the cause of the demise of the News of the World. But again, peer group pressure is the order of the day as everybody was at it and nobody pointed a finger at the millions of people who bought the newspapers that relayed information via phone hackings! 

   Britain has a little work to do on regaining its sense of greatness!

Black Dog

     Catching a snippet of the local television news this evening a woman in a high responsibility council job won record damages for Industrial Injury (circa £300,000) for depression caused through stress in the job. I think it was a counter claim as she was sued for a million for not declaring she was prone to depression at the outset.  Tricky situation and many would argue that a high profile job would demand a person with robust mental health and that the judgment would also send a signal out to employers not to touch with a bargepole anyone suffering a history of depression. So what do you do? Lie about it on the application form?  However, regarding this particular case others on high salaries do tend to justify their pay as commensurate with their ability to deal with high stress.

    Many people suffering from depression actually work to an exceptionally high level of ability and  conscientiousness but there is still the stigma. I actually believe that one should be honest despite the risk.  I was able to convalesce on full pay for two thirds of a year by a compassionate employer (Millfield School where I was teaching) in 1970 at the age of 23 but nobody threatened anyone with court action or pointed fingers but it was simply a gesture and out of gratitude I returned to the job a year later before leaving school teaching. At the time the breakdown was so severe I was lucky to be able to take in food.

   I read not long ago of the case of a man in  the USA who won half a million dollars for the 'emotional damage' of losing his mother early in his life. My mother died in childbirth as a result of blatant hospital neglect. she bled to death. That would have made me a comfortable millionaire!

   What is surely needed is a more compassionate but pragmatic approach to mental health. The statistic is one in six suffer mental health problems. I take some comfort amidst the shame of suffering crippling depression that Churchill suffered  'The black Dog' Someone told me Spike Milligan wrote his epitaph 'I told you I was ill' and that lightening sharp witted comedian on Not the Nine O'Clock News - Paul Merton has also suffered severe depression.

   Not that I would wish depression on my enemy but apparantly there is a high correlation with highly intelligent creative people succumbing to it.  A small comfort to me in that my father regarded me as completely stupid until the day he died!

   High achievers often fall into two categories - encouraged by competitive parents or suffering so starkly in low self-esteem they continually try to prove they are at least worthy! Possibly the former also applies in the child wanting to be noticed by over-competitive parents. Over a lifetime of seeking therapy and finding little help, the best tonic in my opinion for 'The Black Dog' is to get a dog (my little dog is the best human being I know) and enjoy good sex - but not with the dog please!

From a sense of outrage comes great art

   It seems balmy that only a few weeks ago I was hanging on to the roof of my dormer window by the strength of my fingers whilst confronting likely death when on many occasion previously in my life I was considering jumping off that same roof. Whilst I composed myself to gather all my strength at 67 years of age to pull myself up to safety the thought had crossed my mind it might not be a clean death as I could land up a cabbage in a wheelchair or on a life support system with no next of kin to pull the plug.  

   Yesterday I could have jumped off that roof as I had potentially burned my boats with the editor of the only woodworking magazine I haven't fallen out with over what I feel is a lack of respect and I have no comeback as the plug can be instantly pulled. I am also under immense pressure working 14 hours a day currently to complete a film about furniture makers that is not just a thankless unfunded task but has moments of insult added to it. I had just returned from filming a very 'important' fellow furniture maker whose work I have always greatly admired with the casual comment stuck in my head 'I don't mind being in your home movie'.

    My 'home movie' is using equipment I sold a house for to invest in when six film schools turned me down as being too old at the age of 43 and skills I had to teach myself!  I now have to spend several days editing through hours of largely irrelevant banter (that is - to my intended film audience) to create a coherent flowing short story that is both relevant and fascinating and will probably knock spots off anything on television and I am doing this whilst battling daily with herrendous depression that I have suffered probably since the day my father rubbed my nose in my own shit at the age of three, but died before I was man enough to stand up to him. And here I am surrounded by all these priviliged and indulged people in the field of my passion, so full of themselves.

   Doesn't anybody realize film making is a highly skilled team game and yet I am doing it all single handed and just need a little help occasionally! There is no justice and there is one hell of a lot of wilful misunderstanding in the world because so many people choose to exist in just their cocoon. I never had anybody who believed in me as a child, no mum to say 'it will be okay' but a dad (who I had to call 'father' because only working class people use the word 'dad') who beat the shit out of me physically and mentally. 'From a sense of outrage comes great art'* and my film will be great art despite the fact nobody supported me, I had to bully some to be in it, and all the usual funding suspects wilfully rejected me in preference of more worthy projects! Great!

   While many are taking their kids to football matches this sunny Sunday or going for walks with loved ones or whatever is "conventional" I must be mad spending another hugely time consuming lonely day editing my 'home movie' trying to make it up to BBC standard, yet this film will be better than anything on the BBC and once I start a project I have to finish it and when you are weighed down by the heavy lead of depression that saps the energy (and is a solitary prison because no one understands it), it is all the more daunting. But hey ho - who cares a shit!

*quote from the actress Glenn Close.

Woman power

   Had my mother lived I wonder what lessons or wisdom she would have passed on to me. All I know is that she was gentle but also a bit of a tomboy, catching large trout on the family loch. But what opinion would she cast on the young and not so young women of today? I belong to a furniture makers' forum and am already too opinionated on it so I confine these views to my blog which only a few people read (and probably few furniture makers)! 

   Recently a woman member announced an all woman exhibition, inviting everyone to attend. A couple of comments followed, something about dressing up in a nightie to attend and then a bit of a row broke out as one young pc male accused the forum of harbouring what he called 'sexist pigs'. A bit strong! Strictly speaking the exhibition is sexist in being gender specific and receiving funding for it. 

  I felt saddened as I thought all that had past. I have certainly always treated women as equals at woodworking and observed they are more careful and if anything slightly better than men at learning design skills but this is also respecting and wanting to celebrate differences between the sexes. The woman organizing the exhibition (and someone who made it clear to me a few years ago she didn't want her sophisticated green woodwork next to 'rustic' work in my 'Furniture Today' DVD) then posted onto the forum the exhibition manifesto which was clearly feminist and aimed to draw more women into furniture making. This is surely badly needed as it is a male dominated craft, but why not draw them onto the forum as new members instead of create a feminist camp of furniture makers? We men are inclusive. It seems a shame to me but I've probably got it all wrong so I'm going to go off and organize an exhibition of 'Forgotten young-old-men in sheds'.

    

Private Eye

I couldn't believe this photograph was published in the newspaper without an appropriate caption so I added one of my own before Private Eye gets hold of it:

'Come on Sarko, you know Smerkels up for a threesome'

Far from the madding crowd

   Yesterday I drove through the early morning November mist into the heart of rural England to visit a fellow furniture maker to film his work for a documentary DVD I am making. Not the kind of documentary you are likely to see on British television!  It was an uplifting experience to witness and indeed be part of a valuable yet largely unseen aspect of British cultural life and heritage. Far from the madding crowd of endless television celebrity garbage, late night gambling channels, Babestations and kiss and tell tabloid sensations that have aeons ago dulled our senses. Even our Royal 'lad' has been asked to keep it in his pants during his military training visit to a devoutly religious North American town.
   I am not devoutly religious but I am passionate about beauty and good workmanship in wood. What made my intensive day particularly worth getting out of bed for (intensive because armed with a tiny HD camcorder I handled all the skills of a television production team single-handed) - was the quiet modesty of the maker I interviewed, whose work clearly is amongst the very best in Britain today. Some shout from the rooftops about how great or prominent they are in my chosen field and one realises that the Grayson Perry's of this world by crossdressing and cleverly denouncing their own work ('oh please don't take my work seriously darling, its crap really') are the ones who get noticed and are shaping the values and aspirations of innocent young minds, although today I guess the age of innocence is out of the window by the age of five.
    I once shared a flat in London with someone who bought a sports car belonging to Julie Christie, the star of "Far from the madding crowd". Oh such beauty - Julie Christie! We used to hang out at The Troubador in Old Brompton Road, saw Samantha Eggar bomb around Chelsea in her mini Moke and visited some late night basement dive I think was called Cafe de Paris?  But as they say 'if you can remember the Sixties you weren't really there'!
   







  

The human condition

   Many years ago I attended the funeral of a 19 year old youth who had been making furniture with me on a government funded work experience scheme. His mum called him 'the gentle giant' and I remember he was indeed a lovely young man.  She broke the news to me that he had overturned his landrover into a ditch one evening. 

   The family invited me to the funeral and whilst a thick plate glass screen silenced their crying anguish in the back of the funeral car I was in the front of the car next to the driver and all was eerily quiet except for the whine of the engine. In a desperate bid to make conversation I found myself blurting out 'how's business' and the undertaker replied 'really good this month, we've been rushed off our feet'. I not only realised my clumsy attempt at making conversation but that most of us are caught in a mindset and despite two thousand years of civilization are limited by our own experience and see the world through just our own particular window.

   Economists are blinkered by the word 'growth' and yet in nature uncontrolled growth is a cancer. There are ultimately finite resources on this planet.  Recent news of motorway carnage that cannot agree on whether it was white fog or black smoke is very quick to put the blame on an expensive firework display emitting dense smoke, using the health and safety trump card again, when on motorway sections nationwide, marked by chevrons (keep two visible in front of you) very few drivers distance themselves safely enough to stop in an emergency.  Lorry drivers bunch together on most motorways daily and it takes a lot to stop a lorry. Meanwhile the road safety lobbysists have more fuel to attack the proposed raising of the speed limit to 80 yet the focus of blame is on one risk assessment officer at a fireworks event. 

  The media is very quick to blame and judge and the Police are now focussing on a criminal investigation whilst macho rugby players protest they are being used as a scapegoat. Solicitors will be rolling their sleeves up as more lolly comes their way. Meanwhile regulation will increase. I must say it does seems odd that such potentially serious road safety hazard as dense smoke is entertained anywhere close to a motorway and that according to one newspaper the winds were not forecast to blow that way on that evening. 

   Perhaps we should blame the meteorologists and dig up all the records of accident resulting from the London 'Pea Soup' smogs in the 1960's caused by industrialization and then we might take the argument further and consider which way the wind is blowing when there is a nuclear reactor disaster... perhaps we should blame God. It seems to be the human condition.

     

     

Mortality

   Whilst the issue of Health & Safety is topical regarding the protest camp outside St Pauls Cathedral and the astonishing resignation of senior clerics,  I got a taste of reality today (for the first time) as I clambered onto my roof to do some essential repairs. I am no longer a young man, and actually got stuck and was aware I was about to slide down the steep roof and to a probable death, from some four stories up. I thought I would just pull myself up onto the top of the dormer window I built in 1995 and view my plan of action as to what scaffolding I needed to construct in order to carry out my repairs (which was more a matter of completing some cladding on the original build of the dormer window). I struggled whilst fear kicked in.

   In 1995 I totally redesigned and rebuilt the roof, constructing a polythene and batten tent over the house and constructed my own scaffolding using a hefty timber framework. After all the majority of scaffolding globally is made of wood (bamboo). What I overlooked then, because I was young, fit and an ex rock climber, was the erection of safety barriers and harnesses. Although my intention today was not to walk too far  unsupported on a 42 degree tiled incline with gym shoes I was shocked at how I lacked the strength to straddle a mere metre of roof and pull myself up onto the roof of the dormer window, which I eventually completed gripped by fear!  This had never happened to me before and I had defied in my head getting older. A man half my age would have struggled to do this.  So the realization of one's mortality hit home as I sit here and sketch out the improvised scaffolding platform I will build, including safety harness and anchor points should I slip. All common sense stuff of course. The preparation for a few hours work will take a good day and the biggest issue I now realize I have to deal with is the fear of walking the plank so high up. 

   As a young man I was a gymnast and even as recent as 2006 (when I was 62 years old!) I was teaching guys in their twenties how to do back somersaults into a pool in Dordogne. I had been invited to join a working party of young woodworking friends from Bristol. The fear was not so much to do with physical agility (as indeed I was very unfit in 2006) but was about mental attitude and much of tumbling gymnastics is about mindset, without it you break your neck easily. 

   My realization today is that I am not as strong physically as I thought I was and I somehow kidded myself I would be.  There is no moral to this impromptu blog other than to suggest you don't know your limitations until you push them, but that we have to adapt, hopefully gradually but it was for a good reason I thought I was Peter Pan - who wants to get old!  Now I have to change my mindset and plan at some time in the future my wooden stairlift while I am still fit enough to build it. What an exciting challenge. Now, possibly it will be solar powered because were going to run out of energy soon ..... 

Unguarded improvised timber scaffolding four stories up

The roof canopy constructed from timber and covered with polythene

working at a slightly safer height

The fixer

This Entry about  Jimmy Saville removed

Flat pack hunter gatherer

  Apparantly part of Swedish furniture giant IKEA's success is that it appeals to male hunter gatherer instinct. Insert four scan bolts in pre-drilled holes and hey presto I've made the wife a piece of furniture.

Despite IKEA being a Global innovator the concept of flat pack furniture probably dates back to at least the English Tudor period in the gateleg table. Well, it packed flat enough to be freighted on a horse and cart! The one common link is the use of oak, probably the most durable of timbers. Of course durability and IKEA are never mentioned in the same breath but you would be surprised how attitude towards a piece of furniture makes a difference. The testing of IKEA products is not only vigorous and extensive, but if looked after many of the products do actually last.

   Discovering my passion for furniture design as a young man I would have preferred to design for a company like IKEA but I was working 20 years before they dared come to Britain (we were too backward looking for the company who by 1979 operated in 26 other countries).  Some of my designs in the 70's could easily have sold in IKEA stores since the 90's but my only career option was to become a solo designer maker as the UK furniture industry was so hidebound. Faced with the choice of creating designs at a reasonable price that give pleasure to many people or making very expensive one offs for an exclusive market my preference still remains the same 40 years on. There shouldn't be an either or choice but the market tends to dictate.

   It is highly unlikely my own furniture innovations will ever sit in museums such as the V & A but I can take great personal pride that my High backed rocker in particular has found hundreds of homes worldwide, is usable and accessible to ordinary people and some are now being handed down (see image in 'My beautiful hands').  I did produce a plywood flatpack version in the late 70's which was turned down by a local furniture retail shop. 'The public don't like plywood' the shop owner declared.

  

   The Early Tudor Gateleg Table - forerunner to flat pack furniture?

An IKEA room set photographed by Jeremy Broun in 1979 on his visit to 

the original Stockholm store as part of a Churchill Travel Scholarship.

A sturdy oak dining chair from IKEA in 2006. The main downside of pack flat furniture

 is the failure of the consumer to tighten the bolts a few months after the furniture has

 settled into the room environment. Solid wood shrinks and expands.

A flat pack ash rocker designed by Jeremy Broun (1980).
Don't forget to tighten the scan bolts.

Billy the Kid

   Ian (Billy) Kidd was not a typical posh boarding school kid but a down to earth lower middle class lad from Wales. His parents were Bohemian academics (lecturers) and when I stayed at their hilltop farm near Aberystwyth, the Palamino horses were led into the kitchen for feeding while I was waking from my put up bed. I liked Billy because he was different and an outsider like me. I always knew where I stood with Billy, he had no pretences and he was a good laugh at school.

   Billy and I used to play `chicken` with a sheath knife in our sixth form study. `Thud, thud` the knife went as we stood barefoot with feet apart aiming between the toes. The English master was teaching a group of the more academic members of our class in the library below and must have heard these odd sounding thuds coming from the ceiling. He left his class and crept up to our study. `Thud` and the door suddenly opened. The English master was knocked speechless to see the knife land within a couple of inches of my bare feet. On one occasion we used darts instead of a sheath knife and I stupidly let my concentration wander and hit Billy in the leg. He just looked up at me and laughed. Then as he withdrew the dart the air must have rushed into the wound and he swore at me in agony. 

   It was Billy who taught me the guitar. He was a natural and had a beautiful nylon strung classical guitar. I learned two chords 'A' and 'E' and spent most of that year practising and adapting the chords to tunes like 'Tom Dooley' (Capitol Records 1958) whilst other classmates studied for their A levels.

Suddenly one day Billy disappeared. The local CID interviewed me and our other best mate, Derek. Nobody actually knew. Rumour later had it he had got his girlfriend pregnant and was last heard of playing guitar with a gypsy band in the south of France. 
  I guess I owe my early guitar inspiration to Billy. It was only in the past few years I progressed from being able to play just two chords.

The first guitar made by Jeremy Broun at school

A short extract from Missing Jean

Dating site chat up line

What am I doing here - more to the point what are you doing here? Let's swap notes over a cup of coffee, not that awful Costa Starbucko sludge but real coffee with a punch of Nicaraguan Blue Mountain and a topping of cream and none of this 'have a nice day' Americano chill but a warm 'voila' as we sit playing a game of chess in some narrow cobbled street in Montmartre. Yes, I was there in 2009 playing a George Benson song 'This Masquerade' on my acoustic guitar with an awesome saxophonist friend on the steps of Sacre Coeur whilst foot ball jugglers silhuetted against the cityscape. Later that evening, roaming the streets below, we turned up uninvited at a jazz cafe and asked if we could play. 'Do you need paying?' the waitress asked with a doubting look. 'No, just a few drinks please' I replied and we entertained spontaneously, mingling with artists, writers and film directors, until we had to dash to get the last metro train back to our hotel. You couldn't plan such a thing although we just piled our instruments onto a Eurostar train and even had a jam in the bar on the way over. We chanced it and bluffed our way without the necessary busking/street performing permissions and got a sense that 'disobeir' goes hand in hand with 'bureacracy'. So, back to earth and back at home, what about that cup of coffee on this foggy autumn morning? Do you have a story to share? Reach beyond the 'glass is half full or half empty' cliches, switch off the Android, Apple, Blackberry and take a pause from your virtual reality friends. Step off the consumer conveyor belt, forget little Johnny needs a new mountain bike today. Remind yourself we are here for a brief flash in the history of the universe, a mere quirk in the quark. And does it really matter when all is turned to dust!      

Busking with Jim Cook at Sacre Coeur in 2009

London Underground with dancer Tanja in 2010

Coming up for air

   Probably my worst career move was to settle in the Heritage City of Bath. Beautiful though the city is, in almost 40 years I have sold hardly more than a handful of my innovative furniture designs locally! My dream that the best of old and new can co-exist is yet to be acknowledged methinks! How I survived I don't know as much of my life was spent working alone in a basement workshop without any natural light. Curiously I produced some of my most innovative work in an environment stuck in an Eighteenth Century time warp.

   Verging on the edge of solitary insanity (selling work through galleries and not necessarily meeting the client) I eventually came up for air and emerged in recent years on the streets of Bath as a busker, transforming myself from being an invisible middle-aged guy in a town where locals are not inheritantly friendly, to being engaged almost daily by strangers from all the corners of the globe who would throw a smile or thank me for my music. A total contrast to my first career.

   The first time I busked with my guitar I earned 20p and rather like the early rejection of my furniture designs, I perservered, steadily increasing my guitar repertoire, trying out different songs and slowly slowly improving my act. Rubbing shoulders next to homeless buskers and making friends with people who later died from alcoholism and drugs, the experience is levelling and  one acknowledges a rare democratic freedom of playing music, uninvited, to a transient international audience in the centre of one of England's major tourist cities. It took several years to learn my apprenticeship on the street and even when I forgot my chords it didn't really matter as it is not like a paid gig. In fact on occasion I would deliberately play the wrong chords (doing a Les Dawson) to get attention. Few would know I was banned as a youth from playing the guitar as my father said it was an inferior instrument (because of the frets on the fingerboard). I learned the cello instead and then years later taught myself the guitar.

 

Jez Broun busking with Slovak violonists Eva and Marie

   On the streets busking I have met virtuoso musicians from all over the world and got to play with a few, including playing 'Nuages' with Johnny Hepbir! There is nothing more satisfying than to play 'The Girl from Ipanema' and have people of ages ranging from five to eighty dancing in the street to my music, a far cry from the somewhat stiff introverted snobbery of the designer furniture field.

   Music is a fantastic gift that transcends barriers of race, class or age. I am indeed very fortunate that I can play by ear. Today I worked out the chords for 'Summer of Love', played by an awesome young guitarist called Alex Hutchings. Oh if only I could play lead guitar like him but I take a deep breath and remind myself to be myself and just enjoy my quirky blend of latin, gypsy jazz and Shadows music and be thankful it turns people's heads. Music is the greatest therapy of all and I have only just got started.

     

One of four oak benches commissioned for the Roman Baths in 1980

a desk made from the historic stage floor timbers of the Theatre Royal Bath in 1985

Furniture Today

   I am working on 'Furniture Today Part Three', a DVD project I began in 1998. At that time it was mostly furniture 'yesterday' as Britain was drowning in its heritage through fear of the looming Millennium. Of course the title demands frequent updates as the first production was in 2006 and especially now as furniture 'today' has truly come of age.  It is a mammoth task as the field has expanded so much in just the last decade and there is fantastic work going on that is outside popular culture. It is a self-funded project, (the usual suspects rejected my requests). Nobody asked me to do it and unlike Parts One and Two when makers I approached were very responsive to submit material, I am struggling to get makers to respond. I suspect some might fear I will be too outspoken! Yes, I will be outspoken but objective and analytical. If an extremely expensive piece of furniture has technical flaws somebody should surely comment on that?  Be thankful my name isn't Jeremy Clarkson!  It is bizarre to think that conventionally film production involves a team of specialists and I am doing everything single-handed!

Self-taught film maker Jeremy Broun using a Super 8 cine camera in 1984

   There is virtually no serious in depth debate about furniture. The last broadsheet newspaper critic was Peta Levi who passed away (since I featured her in 'Furniture Today Part Two'). I suppose furniture design and woodworking is a passion of mine.

   I am struggling today to work on the project - endless hours of editing film footage, promoting the work of others, when depression drains energy. But I know, despite the struggle, I will make a good job of this update of what is a unique visual document of the best contemporary furniture being made in the British Isles (indeed some of the very best in the world) and placing it in a historical context dating back to the Magna Carta. As Churchill said 'History will be kind to me as I intend to write it'!

   The Zigzag Table by Jeremy Broun. First designed in 1978 this example made in 1984 and the last one commissioned in 2007. Each one is slightly different in size, material and detail.

'It exploits the markings of traditional manufacture, as seen in the wood joints where the top meets the legs, and it is innovative in its centre joint. Limited edition designer furniture provides the closest link between maker and user, and often results in the most interesting products'.


from 'An Encyclopedia of Tables' by Simon Yates (The Apple Press - Quintet Books) 

Fred Baier

   Funny how you switch the radio on in the middle of a programme and you immediately know who they are talking about, rather like hearing the first three bars of a famous tune. Libby Purvis was in laughter as Fred talked about a bookcase on wheels he had created for the House of Lords. It was too early in the morning for me to grasp the technicalities or as in Fred's case the mathematics of his abstractions but to ponder at grand old wise men doing wheelies down the corridors of power on one of Fred's furniture creations.

    I first met Fred Baier at the Sunday Telegraph British Crafts Awards at Somerset House in 1976. He was the winning craftsman and I was one of the shortlisted exhibitors. I expected his workmanship to be  immaculate but what he did was set new boundaries for furniture design.  I introduced myself to him by saying 'Well done mate, refreshing to see you didn't go to the Royal College of Art'. The blank look on his face immediately made me realize I had misread his CV. Oh well, it was a conversation opener and yet curiously over all those years we shared the same exhibition platform it is only very recently that we had a conversation and said hello to each other. Maybe the truth is I was being acknowledged more as a documenter of furniture history than as a fellow innovator!!!

The golden boy of the craft furniture scene, nurtured by the Crafts Council, Fred was a defining character if not to the general public to scores of college graduates but also uniquely alongside John Makepeace bridged the Fine Art barrier.  He was one of the 70's Revival pioneers and it is good to see that he has not disappeared off the radar and is enjoying something of a comeback today.  What makes me very proud of that golden era that we helped shape was that all our work was instantly recognizable, Fred's in particular not least the vibrant pop art colour and Starwars futuristic shapes. A true innovator and someone you couldn't easily copy.

The story I heard that amuses me most is an early one when Fred picked up another prestigious award. The reception was at the Savoy Hotel and when he turned up as guest of honour up he was promptly kicked out by a doorman for inappropriate dress. I think we nicknamed him the punk furniture maker. I have chosen Fred's Prism chair as the symbol of my three part documentary 'Furniture Today'

   Fred Baier's Prism Chair (circa 1994) selected for the V & A Collection

Veronica Jill

   As if having no mother and yet living in a family dominated by females is not confusing enough, to have an older sister with such stunning beauty and charismatic personality was bound to influence me profoundly.

   I grew up not understanding what male chauvenism meant as women to me always got their way. Of course it was a slightly jaundiced a view (both right and wrong) but with an older sister like Jill she just had to click her fingers and the men came running. 'Just watch me' she said when we were in the Traverse bar in Edinburgh where she lived. She must have been about 22 and I was an innocent 18 year old. 'I'm going to walk up to the bar and take out a cigarette' she whispered to me. 'Just watch that man come over and light it'. She did and he did. Later I said 'Jill, you make me sick' and yet I had a strange admiration for her. I think Jill was probably my female model as I seemed to be drawn to women like her.

My sister Jill aged 17

   Jill had a great sense of fun but above all compassion and understanding of people and it was no accident that eventually her stunning beauty and personality would land her up as hostess in the most exclusive nightclub in London in the 60's. She was a protected girl as she lived with the boss's son in a rosewood panelled flat in Mayfair. She knew professional footballers, politicians and members of the Royal family. She dated Mick Jagger, Bert Janch and turned down a threesome with Jimi Hendrix. In the mid 70's she married Gerry Conway, the drummer of Fotheringay. Jill (known as Veronica Jill Conway) became a close friend of their lead singer  Sandy Denny, (voted best British female singer in 1971). Gerry, also acknowledged as one of the best drummers in the world, joined the Cat Stevens band and they lived in LA.  However, their marriage ended over there and Jill became a declared Christian and returned to England landing up on the Island of Mull and then moved to Manchester, always helping down and out people.

   Jill had a truly generous nature but materially had nothing and tragically died rather quickly having been diagnosed with liver cancer in 2009. She had had a cancer scare a decade or so earlier and had telephoned me and only then did I realize how my dear sister had been insecure all her life. Beauty comes at a cost.

   We never had the love of a mother and in a way Jill and I followed a similar path. She once told me  'You could have any woman you want' and I recall replying 'Maybe, but I don't know how to keep them'. Once, when I taught in Bristol she was visiting me and I took her to a teachers' party. 'Let's liven this up and dance' she whispered 'and pretend we are incestuous'. She was a good actress and I rose to the challenge. The staffroom was buzzing with gossip the next week.

   I miss my dear sister Jill even though we had terrible rows, we survived a disfunctional start in life and she was the only person who ever described my mother to me. She told me 'she adored being around mummy' and was 4 when Jean died. I don't think she ever recovered either.

   I visited Jill on her deathbed in 2009 and she cried as we hugged. 'I'll be waiting for you' she said. My sister Jill was one of life's legendary characters and I miss her kind warm voice on the telephone.

Aged 23 with TVR sports car in Bristol

An extract from 'Missing Jean' by Jeremy Broun 

School Masterclass

   One of my passions is that young people are encouraged to use their hands and minds at school. I originally trained and taught as a Handicrafts teacher in London. Earlier this year I received an invitation to teach a Saturday masterclass at Eggars comprehensive school in Hampshire. It was a successful day and the mostly 15 year old boys and girls took home to mum a useful artefect which embodied equally useful woodworking and life skills. I was pleased to be invited to run another masterclass at this school next year and we hope to get permissions to video film this.

    It is vital young people develop through using the incredible gift of hands irrespective of whether they get a job as a carpenter or brain surgeon.  Education through the use of materials is what it was called in the 1960's and served as a vehicle for fostering self determination, acountability, stamina, visualisation,  interpreting abstract ideas into three dimensional objects, numeracy skills, not to mention motor skills involving the senses of touch, sight, and sound, muscle memory. Despite throwing 'craft' out of the curriculum the most enlightened teachers in the 1960's were doing all of this in an integrated way, (teaching design as part of making) but the now established Design Technology curriculum, passes over many of the essential 'making' skills, not least through a basic misunderstanding that the prime purpose of teaching eg. woodwork at school is to train a carpenters. That is the role of post school specialist education.

  With the increasing uncertainty of what jobs we are training young people for (and questioning whether university should be the default route) there is ever more need to teach them resourcefulness through making things and designing what they make. Anybody daring to claim it is too expensive to provide practical education, go raid a skip and use some valuable secondhand wood that is thrown out daily!

   I am course honoured that my skills have not been dumped on a skip and that a school like this invites me in to pass on my skill and experience. There are plenty of exclusive and very expensive masterclasses for older people, many switching careers from 'The City' and encouraged to use equally expensive tools but our obligation is to future generations and give all young people an equal opportunity to develop through their hands.

   The last time I worked with young people (before the Eggars Masterclass) was at my local technical college teaching acoustic guitar making to a group of errant 16 - 19 year olds, some in trouble with the Police and all lacking in any numeracy or literacy paper qualifications from their secondary schooling. It wasn't easy and only three survived out of a group of six but they made their guitars and will probably always look back on this achievement with pride.

A simple leaning bookstand exploiting a dovetail designed by Jeremy Broun and presented to 13 year olds in 1963 made by 15 year olds at  Eggars School in 2010.

Teaching acoustic guitar making on an 'Education to Employment' course in 2005

One mans meat

   I remember during the Falklands war watching TV news images of British mothers in ecstacy over our boys machine gunning down young Argentians alongside images of Argentian mothers in utter anguish over the loss of their sons. How fickle and selfish human nature really is I thought and how did it all go wrong?

   In the news recently a convicted murderer is set free from an Italian gaol faced with the prospect of making millions of dollars from her story whilst the family of the murdered student continue to suffer and are a long way from closure.  Apparantly on the 'commercial' flight taking the American beauty back home the plane was full of media vultures wanting first slice of the inside story. How sick we are.

   We don't actually know who is guilty of the crime as beyond reasonable doubt is shrouded in clever technicality and we were all very quick to form opinions and make judgments the moment it became news and the media circus has also surely affected outcomes?  It is shallow human nature to condemn a convicted young woman of doing cartwheels in a Police station as being highly odd when some of our most famous serial killers have passed under the cloak of astounding normality and even held in public trust.

   We think we know everything and we dont know nothing! I hold out the belief that truth matters and that eventually it is revealed only to be misinterpreted!

Come back when youre famous

   I think it was the year of 1973 and I was working in a converted cattleshed workshop on the outskirts of Bath. The rent was £5 per week. I called myself 'The Bath Carpenter' and took on a variety of work ranging from trimming the bottom of doors (fitted carpets had made their debut then0, to building fitted wardrobes and kitchens which paid the way for me to speculate on my individualistic contemporary furniture designs. I used an anonymous title as I felt good design should sell on its own merits rather than rely on a name, a rather naive view.

   There were no outlets for my furniture. It was too modern. I did manage to persuade the owner of a local Persian Carpet shop to put one of my rocking chairs in front of one of his expensive carpets in the window and he took just ten percent.

   There were two craft galleries in Bath at the time; Coexistence and Centaur Designs. I remember the tall female owner of Coexistence looking down on me and asking whether I had been to the Royal College of Art. I had more breeding in my little toe! I politely withdrew from her exclusive gallery and walked across the road to Centaur Designs with my portfolio. I showed a picture of my rocking chair and said it had been selected for a major London exhibition called "Wood". In his put down I recall the proprietor saying 'Let's wait and see what happens from the London exhibition' which in effect was code for 'come back when you are famous'.

   A few years later a gallery owner in the north of England telephoned me invited me to show my work at an exhibition. I asked her didn't she want to see my portfolio. 'No she said' reassuringly 'That's not necessary, we know your work'.

   2011 footnote: Was this licence to put in a Grayson Perry type appearance?

 The converted cattleshed workshop in Milton Avenue, Bath

A short extract from 'Missing Jean' by Jeremy Broun

Dye Hard

   Okay I put my hands up and admit I have been dyeing my hair for a while. But who cares a sh.., I've been at the invisible age for a few years now and all of a sudden people in the street are calling me sir (a real sign of old age). Well I'm half joking but we are instantly judged by appearance. The first few days was hell (such vanity) but to my surprise I actually quite like it white and a few friends have said I actually look younger. What! How kind one's friends are but the real truth is I would have continued dyeing my hair as it makes me feel younger, but there are some nasty chemicals in hair dyes that don't do the internals a lot of good and so I made my choice, I hope not too late.

   Increasing numbers of women are using Botox and go under the knife and some only in their thirties. Iv'e been 48 for several years now and the fact is I am very young for my age, no lines (even if a few scowels) but pretty fit and engaging in sport and I am still remarkably quick on the badminton court and ride fast motorbikes.

   Reaching the invisible age was one of life's major blows, far worse than losing an important job or even relationship breakup! I'm now probably slightly more invisible to attractive women who I used to catch the eye of without trying up until the age of about 47! I looked about 32 then so I was often told. But it catches up, it gets you in the end and really its even harder for women with all the pressures to look young, slim and beautiful!

   My only defense for this Peter Pan outlook is I was terrified of becoming an adult and felt the pressure to conform, marry, have kids etc. in my thirties and it would have been a disaster if I had conformed because I don't think I know how to (no mum to teach me). I have not followed the conventional life path. The moment childrearing kicks in and the dust settles and you find yourself out in the cold as everything is geared to bringing up kids, you do become invisible and not part of the club. I hadn't realised that when women gave me the eye it was all part of the biological imperative, not just cheeky flirting!

   A man with a lumberjack shirt perhaps in his sixties (who's name was Ron) at a Woodworking show 20 years ago was in a queue to consult me as I was there as a router expert demonstrating the tool that I put on the UK map. When his turn came he quietly said to me 'the wife bought me a router last Christmas but I've been afraid to take it out of the box'. For some unexplained reason my reply to him was 'Now I image you are married, yes? and that you're not just a father but a grandfather, yes?' And he nodded. 'Well isn't life strange' I added 'because you probably got married as a young man as easy as falling off a log but I was terrified to do that when I had my chances, yet with the router I am totally fearless and it is the most creative tool in the world'!

The author of The Incredible Router about ten years ago

Dovetails - The Holy Grail

   In the world of woodworking there is nothing more striking than a dovetail joint and what it represents historically. Many still argue it is the strongest joint and when it come to cutting dovetails they have to be cut almost according to the gospel. 

   But I find it a little irksome when I see immaculate cabinetry at exhibitions and when I open the drawer I see the shoulder line left on. No, no, no. If you are going to stick to tradition stick to tradition! I also observe inconsistency as the shoulder line is never left on the carcase dovetail! 

   So who is the gospel according to? Well if we take the 50's and 60's as the zenith of handmade cabinetry, before machine woodworking got into gear, a Mr Charles Hayward was famous for a series of definitive books on practical woodworking and he was pretty well acknowledged as the authority. In fact nobody since has gone into the craft in anywhere near the depth of his books. He states clearly that the shoulder line should be removed and this teaching at the same time was coming out of the leading colleges Shoreditch and Loughborough. A light shoulder is first scribed and then deepened where the tail and pin portions are removed. the line there serves as a location for a chisel and saw. 

   Although many antiques display crude shoulder lines left on which on close inspection by the torn grain imply a marking gauge was used (rather than a try square and marking knife), it is no guide to proper practice or the best tradition. Many antiques were made by semi skilled craftsman and are so badly designed and made would be thrown out of an exhibition of contemporary furniture today.    

   Here endeth the lesson!

A carcase dovetail devised by Jeremy Broun combining a traditional lap dovetail and through dovetail.

This is a short extract from an article to appear in British Woodworking magazine soon

Red Green Unseen

Red green colour blindness is by far the most common form of colour blindness. Overall colour blindness afflicts around 20% of the male population and of course varies in severity. Its all to  do with the rods and cones in your eyes and you can't pretend you are colour blind or relearn the colours as I have tried to!

   A simple test - an image made up of multi colour dots reads 'color' if you are normal and in my case I read 'onion'. It cost me a job once as a photograper for International Combine Harvesters (although their livery was red and yellow). I passed the interview but failed the medical. 

   Many years later when I photographed over 2,500 colour images for "The Encyclopedia of Woodworking Techniques", when it was voted one of the Top Titles by the UK Booksellers Association, I came clean and admitted to my editor at Headline publishing that I was colour blind. She laughed and said an ex BBC editor friend of hers was also colour blind.

  So what's the fuss about then? None except it is rather irritating but curious that traffic lights, petrol pumps and more importantly the tiny LED charging lights on electronic equipment always use red green. I can always count the traffic lights from top to bottom (only joking) but what is a real nuisance is when i charge up my battery powered musical amplifier when I go busking, I simply cannot tell the red for green.

   Perhaps it is women who design these electronic products!

A Fast Buck

   I always enjoyed shooting rabbits because they were so quick on the run. Even better are hares that are built for speed but we can't mention this here - the thought of going out and hunting for your dinner. Much better its all done in an abbattoire away from sight so a celebrity chef can make a glossy presentation on television.

   Now, making a fast buck is probably more digestable certainly more commonplace and Ed Milliband has recently been accused of being 'anti-industry' implying Britain is a fast buck society. Ask a hundred kids across the board what they would like to do and you wont be far away from a fast buck answer that television and the media provides. 

   But with industry it seems we can't win. If you have nationalised industry it grinds to a halt through bureacratic inefficiency and if you have privatised industry the shareholders run away with the profit and you are left with a diminishing service, well in certain industries. I'm not particularly political but I think its a bit of a nerve the Labour mob coming on so strongly so quickly after messing up so badly so recently! A little bit more time would have given them a little grace and also given this new breed of thirty-something 'puppy' politicians time to grow up. A few more years and perhaps a few grey hairs may lead to a realization we have been a fast buck society for quite a long time. Its nothing new.

  What Ed Milliband was saying I presume is that greed has runaway in our society and he is daring to hint at the most taboo word in living memory - morality! I must admit I was astounded when Mandelson was reported to have once said he was  'intensely relaxed about people getting filfthy rich' not to mention Tony Blair's extraordinary exploits. 'Filthy' rich? Does this mean dirty money?!