Murphy's Radio

       Many will know the colour and style of Cheryl Cole's hair, few will know who Cheryl Cole is and everybody knows who Simon Cowell is. Few will know that in 1934 Gordon Russell made Murphy radios and few will know who Gordon Russell was.

       It was on BBC 4's Today programme that I woke up today to the words  'Gordon Russell was one of the greatest designers of the Twentieth Century'. Not only one of the greatest designers, I have chosen to refer to Sir Gordon Russell as 'The Father of 20th Century British Furniture Design' in my film documentary 'Furniture today 3' (available at www.furnituretodayuk.com). 

       Gordon Russell was a hugely important figure having been involved with The Festival of Britain, The Design Council and Utility Furniture. It is perhaps Utility Furniture that strikes the main chord with me; functional simple furniture designs born out of necessity when there were material shortages during the Second World War and made in modest workshops around the country. A lesson indeed for furniture students to toughen up and design to a disciplined brief but above all making furniture accessible. 

      Gordon Russell although inspired by the Arts & Crafts and in particular the understated forms of Ernest Gimson, differed with that movement in his total acceptance of the machine embracing it with hand skill. Such snobbery or indeed ignorance still exists today not least in the minds of a small section of the public who expect a crafted object to be totally made by hand.  Even in the sweat shops of India and China the machine is fast replacing handskill. Curiously, William Morris a pioneer of the English Arts & Crafts movement cried 'Let us be masters of machines not their slaves', but his work was predominantly taken up by the Bloomsbury Set and still assumes a whiff of exclusivity today.

     The BBC Radio Four design competition for amateurs to design a radio sounds a great inititiative. Let's hope some innovative wooden radios will persuade the judges. For many years I have listened to a Roberts radio in my workshop, a plywood chassis housed in solid Teak. Today Roberts Radio fill the shelves of Currys stores shining in their glossy plastic. Arguably modern technology transcends the superiority of wood as a sound baffle although I still have some massive "Class A" KEF speakers I built in 1970 using chipboard.

    One of the features of Gordon Russell Utility furniture was the use of thin plywood for door panels. Plywood for much of my furniture making career was looked down upon. A local furniture shop declined my plywood rocking chairs saying 'the public don't like plywood'. Russell, of course, was building airplanes for the War Effort and plywood was clearly a superior material then. 
       Unlike Murphy's Law, Murphy radios seldom went wrong!

A Murphy radio built at the Gordon Russell factory in Broadway in1934

Veneered plywood would have been used in the construction.

Aunt Betty

      Aunt Betty died on 19 March 2012. 'A long life lived'. Betty was my father's brother's wife and had lost a newborn child at the same time as my mother Jean died having me. She became a kind of foster mother to me until I was 18 months old, when apparantly my father suddenly arrived on her doorstep and dragged me away with me apparantly screaming 'mummy'. Christmas cards were exchanged throughout my childhood and then I lost contact with her until I looked her up 50 years later, visiting her in Dollar in Scotland. She told me that my father had severely reprimanded her for teaching me the word 'mummy' but she had told him she didn't teach me, I simply copied her own children Francis and Elizabeth!  

      Silly daddy for  not understanding how the young infant's mind works, especially as he was a schoolmaster. Sadly he constantly compared me to his favourite ultra bright nephew (her son) Francis who could put no foot wrong and throughout my youth and despite my passing the Eleven Plus and attending one of the best grammar schools in Wiltshire, I felt completely stupid and a failure in contrast to this academically bright first cousin, who my father constantly banged on about.   

      I guess  this is a rather poor excuse for my not keeping more in touch with dear Aunt Betty who in fulfilling her need in her hour of grief, met my need as a vulnerable motherless infant. Her daughter Lizzie, sadly a heroin addict and close friend of my late sister Veronica Jill, died many years ago. May Aunt Betty rest in peace.

Hello

     One of the most priceless gifts is a smile and although I am privileged to live in one of the most beautiful cities in England it is not that common to be greeted by a hello or a smile on the street, except by tourists when I busk with my guitar.

    A feature of the 'special' (or is it 'essential') relationship with the USA is the common term 'enjoy' when you have been served a meal in a restaurant which is just too often insincere and I cannot help but notice when I walk off the street in my home city (which is one of Britain's foremost upmarket consumer meccas), and go into a clothes boutique as I rarely do but did yesterday, I was greeted by an enthusiastic 'hello' and 'are you having a good day today?'

  It is a sad fact that sales staff up and down the land are trained to be nice in order to grab your money and that the more affluence and material wealth that abounds, the less humanity of a simple smile or hello exists.

    A few Christmases ago I was spending it alone and decided to wash my car outside my house. Someone passed silently and as he walked by I called 'Happy Christmas'!

    When somebody smiles and makes eye contact in that brief moment you glow for the rest of the day and it costs nothing to give.   

Backing down and coming out

    It was heartening to read that the world's most famous atheist professor Richard Dawkins is only 6.9 out of 7 sure there is no God and denies he is atheistic. Billions of people worldwide have believed in the existence of God and billions probably will after him, yet here we had two academics 'battling' it out (Rowan Williams) in tv debate where no new punches were pulled and I suspect it was mainly intellectual one-upmanship.

     Then I learn that Lord Melvyn Bragg has come out about his depression. I first wrote about my own autobiographical novel 'Glass Wall' (now 'Missing Jean') over fifteen years ago and depression has largely sapped my energy to get it published! Macmillan publishing was interested but then said it wasn't quite their bag. I have come to the conclusion that only those who have suffered the terrifying depths can understand it and many fear it is a plague that could knock on heir own front door so shun its existence. It is not something one would wish on one's worst enemy and is sure to chase away all but your very closest friends. 

    As Bragg says it is an elastic term and for some an excuse not to go into work and a form of negative self pity. What is important is trying to cope with it and hang on to the extremely fine straw of hope that things will ever change and improve. One strategy I have tried that works to a degree is to make a friend of my enemy depression on the basis that if I can't fight or change it I can try to accept it. Going to bed and surrendering to it is in a way, for me at least, a way of letting nature heal as the worst of the storm can pass by sleeping it off but at other times it makes it worse. Nutrients, exercise and laughter can help and watching a Charlie Chaplin movie can take the sting out of the terrifying silence of isolation which is a major cause of depression.

      I read today Esther Rantzen's soul-bearing piece about prolonged isolation after the loss of a loved one on the MailOnline and she is particularly brave because if you are famous you meet even more hostility if you challenge our odd taboos. But we are still living in the Dark Ages and the problem ain't goin away. If you've got a broken leg you get it fixed and everybody signs the plastercast but if you have a broken mind (which probably mean a broken heart as well) then you walk alone!  

Ankle Deep in humanity

    Many many years ago a friend told me there is no place in this world for sensitive people. Indeed the sensitive particularly suffer in this involuntary confusing journey. The problem is that in an insensitive world compassion, the very thing that surely binds the human race together, disappears. Compassion is bound up in 'doing the right thing' and sometimes in the flash of a second, anybody would do the right thing, when for instance a man is drowning?

     Many years ago I was in Australia swimming off the famous Bondi beach. I am not a strong swimmer and was being pulled under by dangerous rip currents only a few metres from the beach. Just as I was struggling to swim ashore I became aware of a man on his back fully clothed bobbing up and down in the water and purple looking (I am colour blind so thats what he looked like to me). He was basically drowning. Another swimmer and myself immediately went to his rescue. The other man, much younger and fitter than me (I was 43) attended to the drowning man in this dangerous water and yelled to me to get help so I swam using all my reserves to the beach, bobbing under as I did so. 

    Exhausted I managed to scream 'help, man drowning' and was just stared at by motionless beautiful people in the prime of their youth, beautifully tanned just sitting there in their vanity and doing absolutely nothing (this shock haunted me for years afterwards). However, quite quickly the rescue guys came in their red motorised rubber dinghy (or was it orange) and in the meantime the hero in this story had pulled the man on shore and gave him mouth-to-mouth. As the lifeguards took over and applied an oxygen mask to the nearly drowned man, his rescuer just quietly walked away, through the beautiful people just sitting there unaffected. I followed him and grabbed his arm  'Hey, you just saved that man's life - well done mate'.

    Back in Britain, in fact yesterday, I read in the newspaper a man had drowned in a boating pond as fire rescue officers stood and watched. They were not authorised to go into water more than ankle deep. A police officer was about to wade in but his superior fiercely reprimanded him apparantly. So the man drowned while our rescue services just stood and watched. He was trying to rescue a capsised model boat I think.  

Great - Britain!

Marathon

     About five years ago I met a talented harmonica player in Dordogne on a working holiday with some woodworking friends from Bristol. His name is Kristof and he invited me to participate in a 1500km canoe trip through Mongolia the following year, to film it and then play guitar to his harmonica around the campfire in the evenings. 

    He organized these survival marathons drawing globally for his victims. I thought hard and not so much about my age but more my lack of physical fitness as at the time I was in very slow recovery from a serious bout of paralysing depression. Two years earlier I was doing well to spend two hours per day out of bed as I had lost the will to live and there were no hospital beds when I 'fell down' so it took many many years to stand up again. I also feared I would get bored canoeing over such a long stretch.

      I have just completed a similar marathon of primarily mental endurance (the complete opposite of the deeply depressive state) and also physical endurance in that since October I have been working mostly on average fourteen hours per days on a film project called 'Furniture Today Part Three'. It took a long time getting started, had no support of funding, nor did anybody ask me to do it, most people in Britain are tuned into furniture yesterday and I had no proper 'business plan' or strategy to sell the film other than a confidence that the story I was telling would one day be heard (seen). 

       Curiously at school, whilst not much good at academic stuff I always came first or a close second at cross country running and the distance was something like 20 miles as it was an outward bound type progressive school. The film has been made single handed breaking all the rules as it is a team based profession. I'm also self-taught as six UK film schools turned me down as being too old at the age of 43.

        Computer software crashes, glitches, etc meant I probably spent at least five days on every running minute of the film. The documentary is 70 minutes long and will have its premiere screening at the University of Bath on the evening of Thursday 15 March 2012. A 200-seater lecture theatre has been booked and improvised jazz music will be played by a legendary rock guitarist to welcome people as they sit down. I am pleased with the film. It is my best shot. 

        I therefore extend my invitation to you, my reader as there might be one seat left. Visit my website www.furnituretodayuk.com for details. My You Tube channel WOODOMAIN includes videos of the film trailer, how it was made and also a short one including the harmonica player Kristof.

Mother - Hell hath no fury

    Hell hath no fury like a .....mother's love. Slightly unusual that someone who never had a mother watches a two-hour South Korean film called 'Mother' by Bong Joon-ho. An alternative film deserves an alternative review surely! I accompanied a friend who wanted to see the film at the last minute and I had no idea what it was about. Bradford on Avon Film Society is arguably one of the best in the country and its mainly middle class late middle aged audience was full capacity at the screening of this tense psychological thriller. 

   The film is certainly shocking and disturbing not least in exposing taboos such as a retarded man in his early twenties sleeping with his mother, although clearly it emphasised the point he was still a child. The sub titles use the word 'retard' but this is a taboo in Britain so I use the adjective for want of a better description for someone of a simple-minded disposition (I think we call it 'learning difficulties'). In contrast the mother has a powerful mind and a relentless determination to prove the innocence of her somewhat rebellious son accused of murdering a young woman, making Agatha Christie's Poirot look tamely bourgeois in the search for who dunnit. 

  The film is also about justice (coming from unexpected quarters) and as a piece of film making I think is a work of art with very powerful imagery and an Oscar deserving performance by its 59 year old star Kim Hye-ja. There is a powerful surrealistic opening scene of her dancing in a field and as the cameras slowly zoomed in I thought this was a 45 year old woman with the trim and lithe body of a 30 year old. The only part I found predictable in the film was the return to this scene near the end of the story as part of the film genre was flashback and as a film maker myself I could see it coming. 

   To articulate the story and give a clever conventional opinion its best to read the Guardian review by Peter Bradshaw and there is a very high probability he had a mum so I will try to keep this review relevant to my unusual perspective that I watched it through the eyes of someone not having a mum and relying on a fair bit of guess work about what exactly the emotions flying around are all about. Perhaps I am writing this in the hope that somebody else of my disposition might read this!      

   The most powerful scene for me was when the mother discovers her son really did kill the girl (albeit accidentally) and she batters to death the person who witnessed it as he is about to phone the police. She uses a King Dick and although this film has mildly pornographic content a 'King Dick' to the technically unititiated is a giant adjustable spanner used for farm machinery. This scene is more graphic than the nubile sex scene which is sparing to the largely senior audience - graphic in its shocking sound effects - you almost feel the blows. This scene is so ferocious and the subsequent act of the mother setting fire to the house and burning all evidence of the witness illustrates the power of a mother. Perhaps power is a limited word as it gets mixed up with control and a whole gammit of roles and emotions a mother has. Paradoxically whilst in Western culture the mother has more legal rights to underpin her power, this Korean woman was up against corruption in the legal system and public ridicule in her endless pursuit to protect her boy at any cost. No wonder many western women accuse their men of having limited emotional intelligence when the mother, like a hand being cut off, retains the power of the umbilical cord throughout her life?      

   Back to the plot, the son in his simplicity roams around the burned ruins of the house his mother has set alight to remove all evidence of her crime and he finds her metal box containing her accupunture needles (she is an unlicenced practitioner) and right at the end of the film my only confusion is when she can bear the emotions no more she gets on a bus full of dancing parents of sons like her own and uses a needle on her amazingly nubile thigh (for a 59 year old woman!) and I thought she was going to commit suicide but instead she triggered a happiness nerve in  the brain and the film ends with her dancing with the others. 

  From the perspective of my own youth-dominated culture I questioned why the leading character was a woman of 59 with a son of around 21 (I thought having children later in life was a luxury of First World countries?), but perhaps the lines on her face and the experience an older woman carried added to the poignancy. Certainly the face of Kim Hye-ja was amazingly expressive. I like a film that has a really strong central character (such as Gene Hackman in The French Connection) and although my cinema companion (a mother herself) thought the film was ghastly I can say I would uncomfortably watch it again.  
   Although the film was about a mother's protection of her son, the lengths she would go to, and paradoxically the ultimate powerlessness she had. If the film has any message it is always carry your acupunture kit with you if the pain, guilt and anguish gets too much.  

   
The guardian Review of 'Mother' by Peter Bradshaw can be found at:

www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/aug/19/mother-review

Life ends at 45

   Okay so now we've been told. Its official. And I have a sneaking suspicion only people over 45 read my blog. According to the latest News your brain cells are dying earlier than we thought and if the word 'retirement' isn't enough to make any 65 year old feel on the crap heap, being told you are brain dead after 45 is going to really do the trick.

   Well let me tell you I have hardly started living yet and I'm a good few years over 45. I haven't even been married let lone divorced three times and I haven't reached the pinnacle of my creative work yet so there's still a lot to pack in. I did the online mental agility test included in the news item and wondered whether it was an error and intended for twelve year olds. I play at least one game of chess every day and am more in touch with the news than ever before, using an iPad as a very handy device to gather information. I also play and compose music at least twice a week. 

   Although I was deemed "thick" at school in the days when getting into university was actually very difficult I reckon I would leave many young graduates standing if brain/reasoning power was tested today and not least in stamina as my current video project am working roughly fourteen hours a day.

  So, please forgive the lack of modesty here but spurred by increasing irritation that generalisations, frequently contradictory are thrust upon us.  I refuse to succumb to being a victim of Ageism. My uncle who was my guardian in his fifties, when I was seventeen, was a highly capable and distinguished man, being the chairman of the largest Timber Sawmills in Scotland and the Dean of Guild of Glasgow, said to me that a man reaches his prime in his late fifties. Today we are told that the new twenty is the old thirty, that the new forty is the old sixty so this is another piece of unconnected 'official' thinking.

   Whereas I am supposed to be well into an era of 'managed decline' I would prefer to say I am in an era of 'managed time' - with luck another thirty years of active service. One of my heros and someone I once met is the broadcaster John Humphries and who out-speeds and outwits our youthful politicians.

Loss and Integrity

    It was only in August last year (2011) I bumped into an old friend Alan Mitchell who was the kingpin of woodworking magazine editors in the Seventies and Eighties. Out of respect I captured him on film to include in 'Furniture Today Part Three'. 

   With sadness I learned today that Alan had died in early December. I discovered this while Googling for some dates of his editorial office. Alan was a legendary 'fixture' in the woodworking media for many years, in fact a kingpin. Not just that he was a truly democratic and friendly person who went out of his way to scoop interesting stories and even landed up unnannounced at my small furniture gallery in Bath in the mid 1980's, having climbed a very steep hill, to run a feature. 

   It was heartening to see him at the Cheltenham 'Celebration of Craftsmanship and Design' exhibition Private View and he was immediately friendly and thanks to the organizer Jason Heap for having a 'flexible approach' regarding who is invited to Private Views that the impromptu opportunity arose for me to pay my respect to Alan on film. The policy at this major UK annual furniture show before Jason took over was to limit the Private view to clients and exhibitors only, breaking with the great tradition that Private Views are also social events and to use modern media language are the equivalent of Facebook to do business in a social networking environment! 

   Anybody who is in the tough business of sustained economic survival surely knows that you have to think outside the box and consider all sorts of ways to find customers and often the best results come from indirect means. Alan Mitchell was neither a prospective client nor a current craft journalist at this exhibition Private View so under the old regime he would not have been invited but clearly he was a man who gave his life and passion to woodworking and was not one for cultivating favourites or enemies but just did his job fair and square and genuinely liked the people. 

    Magazine editors and the craft media have great power and 'make and break' names. It was unusual to come across a magazine editor with the integrity Alan Mitchell had, but perhaps that was an age when the term might be more frequently used.

    It has been a challenging couple of years for me  - the great furniture maker Alan Peters died in 2009. He was my schoolboy hero and later a good professional acquaintance, someone of great integrity in his work, then a good male friend of mine who seemed to have everything, took his own life in the same year. Then in 2010 my charasmatic and colourful older sister Jill (who once turned down a date with Jimmi Hendrix) died of cancer within about three months, and then my half-sister Barbara died of a brain tumour, having suffered dementia at a shockingly young age. Now in 2012 my aunt who was my guardian and offered me a home when I was 17, is on her deathbed and probably has weeks to live.

Life is strong yet fragile. We know it all, yet we know nothing. We are here today and gone tomorrow, but the show goes on with new kids on the block re-inventing wheels and who one day will follow the same destiny!!

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)