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