Well they warned us

        'The level of the most important heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere, carbon dioxide, has passed a long-feared milestone, scientists reported on Friday, reaching a concentration not seen on the earth for millions of years'.

         Well they warned us that we had a decade to make a U-turn and now the decade is up, but the problem today is every observation or 'fact' is immediately cancelled out by those who argue the opposite and despite the scientific age we live in, nobody seems to know, or we just don't like to face up to reality.

The day I met Maggie

      Margaret Thatcher died on 8 April 2013. I had the honour to meet her in her first term of office as British Prime Minister - I recall in 1980 a slightly stooping ordinary looking woman dressed in a light blue twin set scuttling into Kensington Town Hall carrying a handbag as the audience stood to greet her.

     Anyone handing out an award to 100 people might be pushed to say anything original and immediate to each and it is unlikely they would compare notes afterwards which would be interesting. As I stood on the stage waiting for my cue I was briefed that I had 18 seconds to converse with her. I walked on to the announcement  'Jeremy Broun visited furniture designers, manufacturers and retailers in Sweden, Finland and Italy'. As she handed over the medal and I shook her hand she softly whispered 'well done, I hope you taught them a thing or two'. I was too mesmerised by the occasion to say anything more than 'thank you' but on exiting down the stairs I immediately thought why didn't I say 'on the contrary, ma'am, I was there to learn from them '. I had bought a pea green flared felt suit for the occasion, far too tight around the shoulders and crutch to comfortably wear much again so I mothballed it my 'Maggie Thatcher suit'.

I was 33 years old and making innovative handmade furniture in a tiny cramped underground workshop without natural light. My ideas were too forward looking for the hidebound British market so indeed it was a huge shot in the arm for me to win the Churchill scholarship that took me away from 'Little England' and discover my ideas were shared abroad but also that I would soak up much of Scandinavian and Italian culture in my chosen field. 

   However, now some 33 years on I have observed how the spin on history changes and Maggie became a hate figure to younger generations whose parents she encouraged to pursue individual plight. But the dominant opinion today is largely second hand opinion and I suspect the hate has another agenda. People forget how much Margaret Thatcher not just led but echoed a change in attitude in Britain. She was a person  of her time and greed was already in the air. She held the view that encouraging individual enterprise and reward would benefit society but in so doing may have ironically destroyed a sense of community. But she, like others was contradictory. I'm not a politically educated or inspired person but am bound to hold views about welfare, education and commerce, a complex and conflicting mix in itself.  Yes she was not entirely right (longterm) in my opinion to sell off Council houses (reducing the safety net for genuinely needy) and clearly wrong over the Poll Tax and I do remember events that happened at the time. She was surely right to stand up to the unions who were crippling this country and engaged in blatant class war. There is no universal right that anyone born into an occupation in a particular community can continue that for ever. Migration and change is the story of civilisation and as an individual I have personally had to adapt and adjust to suddenly and unfairly losing valued jobs in the area I trained. Also I have a 'Facebook culture' thrust on me to conform to whether I like it or not and the destruction of letter writing, the art of communication, arguably ruined by emails! These things destroy sense of community also. Arguably miners communities could have been protected but at what cost to the economy? The strikes were self-interested causing chaos and misery for millions of ordinary Britons.   
      Margaret Thatcher was above all a world player with unique influence on a par of Churchill (who fought for freedom we abuse). She got dialogue with Gorbachov and charmed Reagan, cementing ties with the USA and helping break down the Iron Curtain. We seldom question the impact of American culture on our own culture today? She also (astoundingly) clawed back an EEC rebate that still remains largely intact today.

     Margaret Thatcher was arrogant and had audacity, clearly attributes of a strong leader! Inevitably power corrupts and she did became too extreme and I guess history will paint a divided view but then Britain today since Thatcher has become more divided, more greedy with political opposition betraying its roots and it is easy to pin the blame on just one person. One thing I learned on that day I met the Prime Minister was never to judge a woman with a handbag, appearances are deceptive! Margaret Thatcher RIP. 

Love thy 'Nay'bour

       Strongly influenced by a Christian upbringing and believing in 'God' until I was about 45 years old, I consider I had a good start in life in that respect. Such a childlike belief warded off cynicism until a much later age. 

       Sadly my older sister Jill's fundamentalist belief in Jesus Christ the saviour caused a rift between us in latter years when she frequently used the words 'devil, sin and demons' whenever we spoke on the phone. I could never accept the notion we are all born dirty sinners before we even breath the first breath of life.  It was, however, on her death bed that she held my hand and said with her familiar loving smile 'I'll be waiting for you'.  It would indeed be an arrogant atheist not to consider the possibility that there is the 'other side' - heaven, spiritual unity, eternal union and peace, or whatever. I have no greater intellectual capacity to argue for or against a God and am always stuck at the point of how human suffering can be allowed by a so-called loving God, so in turn I refer back to the only thing I know - the human condition - the use of human language passed down through the ages to explain or bring some kind of order to our lives. I refer to the Holy Bible in which the Ten Commandments seem to be a pretty basic human code of conduct irrespective of the existence of God. 'Love thy neighbour' is a fundamental commandment and strategy for co-existence. And so too is 'Do unto others....'

     The shock that consumers have been duped into eating horse meat when they were told it was beef leads us to automatically blame others - first the Romanians who have a lot of horses and then the French and in no time at all the finger is pointed closer to home in a Yorkshire abbatoir. Of course Government ministers, the Food Standards Agency, Jimmy Saville and the ex-chief of the Royal Bank of Scotland are to blame, but what about the people working at the abbortoires, their wives and daughters, the van drivers.... did they not know or were they not party to a degree of the scam? Do they, do we not care what we do to others?  

      The word 'morality' has been firmly deleted from any public/media dialogue for decades and what is going on in the horse meat issue is the tip of the iceberg in a culture that has consciously allowed image (what is on the label) to override content, substance or truth. Switch on any television soap and the script is to swindle, cheat, outdo and make a fast buck out others. This is the daily sermon that replaced the church service many years ago! the staple diet. You could call it a fundamental lack of love for fellow human being and the drug is ....money, lotza money! Sad.

        And while the Government pushes out of work people to take up any job as a second option and become cheap labour for multi million pound employers, the Government find themselves in an illegal position, but has anyone asked the university graduate who won her case, who promised you a job with that meaningless degree in the first place? I recall being suspicious of the term 'gap year' as a ploy by universities to get bums on seats before youngsters left schools and travelled the world for fear they might not come back. 
     Someone told me many years ago that people don't like to face the truth. So there's no problem then, it doesn't matter if its horse or donkey meat as long as its fast and cheap! 

  

  

The tail wagging the dog

      Recently in the news it was reported that doctors are being advised to be careful in prescribing Benzodiazepine tranquillisers. 'Diazepam' and 'Lorazepam'  

come from this family of drugs.  I didn't get as far as reading who is advising them but all I know is my dear late sister Veronica Jill was addicted to a prescription drug called 'Ativan'  over a twenty five year period and one readily prescribed to me for a few years. She tried in her own way to raise public awareness by appearing on a daytime television programme that highlighted this  toxic family of drugs and their dangers were known decades ago.

      Anyone suffering severe depression will likely have associated anxiety, a terrible 'no hiding place' affliction and this kind of treatment is basically a sledge hammer to the senses with longterm effects on the nervous system and arguably now an impact on Dementia, I nearly forgot to say. During a hospital stay - my closest encounter of hell on this earth (my state of mind, not the hospital), I was given hefty does of 'Diazepam' and probably one of the greatest acts of will and determination in my life was to throw them down the lavatory pan and face my demons in full consciousness when I was discharged. I was even offered money on the street for my prescribed drugs.  

      To this day I refuse to take medication and this  includes alcohol in large doses. When things get really bad it is a glass of cider or red wine as there is no doubt drugs affect the mind. But I would be ignorant to wrong say drugs are wrong for managing all mental conditions and I suspect as with everything else rthere is a payoff called side effect. The term 'side effect' has a similar ring to 'clean' energy when talking nuclear. In an ideal world we would need no doctors but at least we should have the trust that their judgment is sound. 

     I lost my mother Jean in childbirth due to medical neglect. She shouldn't have died. She died bleeding of an internal hemorrhage and there was no care present. It was a tragedy that should not have happened. In my youth my father mistakingly overdosed on insulin as he was diabetic and in his coma was pumped full of more insulin by a freshman doctor in hospital. 

      As a young man trying to deal with the socially tabooed condition of depression I had a rare doctor who happened to be elderly and a Christian. He would book me in for his last surgery of the day so he could give me a little extra time and the biggest therapy was having someone genuinely caring to listen to me. Financial worries were part of the depression and he knew I was a furniture maker struggling to make a living with no outlets for my avant grade designs. He suggested an empty shop window I might approach a local businessman about and I took on that shopwindow at a rent of £3 a week on the busy A4 road. I called my shopwindow 'The Bath Carpenter' and my unusual furniture got a wide audience due to traffic jams right by it. Thanks to my doctor. That was in 1977 but the doctor of today in the society of today paints a very different picture. Heaven only knows what will happen when doctors have control of the purse strings. 

      

My Aunt Wilhemina Barns-Graham

      My aunt Wilhelmina or 'Willie' to family and friends was a celebrated British painter and member of the St Ives School who's centenary was 2012. She died in 2004. Few people had heard of her outside the inner art sanctum (certainly in my youth when I mentioned her to artist friends) and although her CV included major galleries around the world, she received public recognition (The CBE) much later on in her twilight years. 

     Willie was the sister of my mother Jean who died having me. We were virtually the only practising creatives in the wide family apart from my late half-sister Barbara.  In her work I recognised the importance of technique and how learning the rules gives one true freedom to break away. Her early water colours were a fantastic expression of mastery of technique and indeed technique was instrumental in much of her abstract work such as using paper hole stiffeners as a collage in a particular phase in her work. 

      I am no art critic, although she once asked me my opinion about some of her last paintings and then she said 'you sound just like like the Sunday Times art critic who was down here last week'. The fact is anyone could see she was a fantastic artistic brimming with creative energy right up until shortly before her death and if any work of art truly evokes feeling then finding language to describe it is not rocket science. Perhaps equally importantly she was one of a small group of prominent women, such as Mary Goldring, who spoke on Radio Four about various topics. I recall her as a great story teller, just like my late sister Veronica Jill. 

    The point of this short comment here, is one of the apparent lottery of life and how, in misspelling her name in a letter of congratulation may possibly have cost me an inheritance to be an innovative furniture maker operating from a 'stately' home, instead of a tiny cramped basement workshop without natural light in an artisan terraced property!  Life is certainly a mystery in the cards that are dealt out:

  Willie amongst fellow painters in St Ives (circa 1947)

'Penniless artists' mentioned in the video is a generalised term based on the assumption that many artists lack the financial means to sustain their art and therefore a trust set up to help talented young people by way of offering scholarships is an entirely worthy cause.

Dymentia is wonderful

      Last night I attended a Royal Society of Arts regional 'networking' meeting, my first ever and a rather daunting experience. The first thing I noticed at reception was a bold advertising card 'Do you know anybody who would like to be a Fellow?' It reminded me of Pyramid selling and Party Plan in the 70's!  I was then interrupted, while I was chatting with a local architect I had not met before, to talk to a stranger by the (presumably Scandinavian) young facilitator (no, we don't do that in the south of England!) and then ushered into neatly formed discussion groups. I felt like a sixth former being controlled to speak freely. Of course it had to be this way. Sitting beside me was a young guy with trendy soft leather retro winkle picker shoes (looked pink to me but I'm colour blind) busy 'networking' on his mk3 iPad jumping up and down taking pictures and recording the experience, yet not once did he make eye contact with me sitting next to him! This is called social networking.

      Two young speakers emerged and I had to choose which discussion group I joined. The first group was headed by a pretty young and self-confident woman who immediately announced 'Dementia is wonderful, depression is wonderful' campaigning for a local support group, and the other, a young guy who had a plan for kids in schools which included knowing how to set up a bank account and preparing for dinner parties. I presumed he was talking about teenagers but he may have been referring to primary school kids! I couldn't help wondering that parents lost the art of having dinner parties decades ago and that the notion of a dinner party in a secondary school in Glasgow was plain funny. As to bank accounts for the young we are still reeling from the education Industry tricking young kids into borrowing vast sums after their 'gap year' to pursue high status and high earning careers through our universities all on a plastic card!  I stupidly joined the education group because that is my passion and of course got embroiled in fanciful ideas-overload making me wonder is it the process or the end result (sorry - 'outcome' is the jargon) that counts in all of this here at the RSA? 

    I engaged in discussion with my sub-group and another very pretty young woman with a nose piercing that glinted under the cold fluorescent lights in this church cafe, muttered something about kids being inspired to use their imagination in schools. No we can't do that, it would lead to anarchy in society, but of course I agreed with her but teachers themselves are terrified of using their imagination, they are so locked into a controlled system! I tried to get a word in saying we need to get back to kids using their hands and minds and making things, but half the problem is in the outdated use of language such as the word 'craft' in society.

    And then the whistle was blown and the two group leaders stood up and revealed something I would never have imagined in all my years on this planet - the young pretty girl announced that the two groups had much common ground and would link together as educating the young and changing attitudes would lead to society changing its attitude over dementia and death. Hang on this is the RSA which is about 'fresh' thinking. Haven't we heard this before and isn't it the age old argument about whether it is the place for school to innovate or reflect what is going on in adult society and thus prepare young adults for it? Of course a bit of both goes on and school is one of the few playgrounds there is. Most teachers don't know what we are preparing young people for because who knows what jobs will be needed in the next decade alone?

     One thing I learned was how the world has changed with all the social media frenzy and we were all encouraged to Twitter away. I would rather have flittered my eyelids at a pretty young woman sitting at the same table but we have lost that art and of course by my repeated use of the word 'young' here means clearly I am not part of the the club that has 'fresh' ideas! Well okay, my ideas are old but are yet to be taken up!

       I was rather offended by the highly articulate facilitator saying that it is fruitless to be a lone soldier taking on projects, but when you have tried getting funding and collaboration for something you are passionate about for longer than he is old and land up funding it and doing it yourself I feel is a simple case of putting your money where your mouth is. As to depression being a wonderful thing I wondered if the pretty young lady had experienced two bouts of utterly indescribable hell in a hospital psychiatric wing and living with it on a daily basis and as to dymentia being wonderful, well, my dear half-sister Barbara suffered rapid premature dementia and died of a brain tumour not long ago. But obviously her heart is in the right place and I can see the logic of trying to make your enemy your friend. But will the research she called for be directed in creating technological gadgets that aid those suffering dementia or used to get to its causes?

       The harrowing experience of someone like myself, essentially someone quite shy, and not a great 'people manipulator' who works primarily alone and gets concrete results on my own, was that the RSA's invitation to me to become a Fellow was a flattering gesture that in reality relies on my subscription to fund much younger people's (and less experienced) voices being exercised and that unless you conform to this relatively new language of social networking, you have nothing to offer, quite apart from age unless you have the title 'professor' before your name! 

       I would have liked the opportunity to say not long ago I was invited by my local technical college to teach a group of 16 to 19 year olds who failed everything in their schooling with no bits of paper to flash around and some were in trouble with the Police, to build an acoustic guitar. I had to teach kids with criminal records for violence to stop brandishing chisels at my face and re-direct their focus. They learned more about numeracy, literacy and discipline in that short experience making something that interest them than all the King's horses and when I met one or two of them in the street years later, they simply stopped and thanked me. I was invited to continue with this project but maintaining simple respect and discipline (that manipulating tools and materials alone demands) was so exhausting I could not go through it all over again. And why should I when discipline is a thing others should teach as a collective effort and first and foremost from their parents.      

Intelligent Design

       The little Smart car that is my workhorse is fantastic in many respects - it is small enough for me to park in my overcrowded street where other cars can't fit into the space, it takes daily battle scars of people pulling in on the narrow hill, letting their foot of the foot break or plainly misjudging their car's clearance and banging into the wings of it and I have a box trailer for occasional heavy loads. And it is economic.
        I can live with the BMW drivers who insist on coming right up to my rear on the open road as I know I can easily blow them away on my motorcycle, but what I find is mind-numbing is a discovery that has temporarily left my intelligently designed little Smart car a piece of useless plastic metal and rubber parked on the road, awaiting a cost effective solution.

Compact, turbo charged 50+mpg Smart Fortwo

    Last week after heavy rainfall (that drowned at least one car driver, so I shouldn't complain) as I switched the ignition on, the left flasher came on and stuck on. It later revealed that the engine management system, a tiny 'black box' crammed full of circuitry that controls absolutely everything on the car is sited under the dashboard and right underneath the windscreen that apparently is prone to leaking. So, having owned over a dozen minis in my youth and remembering that the distributor cap was always prone to damp but one could easily seal it with a plasticising spray or wrap it in insulating tape, I was dumbfounded to discover this little expensive and crucial black box called a 'SAM' (app £500) was not even protected against water ingress, quite apart from the inherent design fault of the leaking windscreen right above it! The official verdict is water in the SAM - replacement. 
     It takes no Einstein to ask why such an intelligently designed car would fail so totally and what makes matters worse is that once the little black box is removed it can't be repaired, a new one is not currently available from Mercedes and even if a new one is replaced it will incur further expense in re-coding to suit my car which means driving the car to Mercedes - Hang on . . . 
    To add injury to insult, once the engine management system (called a SAM) is removed the car is stuck in gear which means it cannot be freewheeled out of the way if it has to be moved.
     Now, this is what is called 'Intelligent' design - a car knowingly designed and based on decades of motor engineering experience by a world leader that has such a basic design flaw and I am referring now specifically to the fact the car can't be moved once the black box control system is removed!. Nobody cares because the 'intelligent' thing is that when things go wrong you can't fix them as in the 'old days' but you bin them and pay a fortune for a replacement and labour charges plus VAT. You are basically f....d.  
    Okay, the devil is always in the detail today so we understand that the Smart car was engineered by Mercedes and was a collaboration with Swatch (the watch people) who I gather designed the body, so we have a cop-out clause that Mercedes didn't actually design the whole car but they put their name to it and if you want it serviced you receive constant reminder calls from Mercedes to book it in and they will tell you everything else that needs doing as well while you sit in the posh waiting room drinking free freshly ground coffee.

    I do think the Smart car is a fantastic car, not least the plastic body panels that flex when others hit you before they break, unlike a metal car that crumples. But this problem of engine management computers is not just peculiar to Smart but runs all across the motor industry today. I heard of someone with a Nissan Micro where they had to go all the way to source the replacement part in Japan - final bill for water getting into it - £2000. 

I do like the Smart car for urban use and I have considered an electric version but the technology is still in its infancy. Renault have brought out a dinky little electric car called the Twizy and I'm really tempted for my cramped city use but you have to lease the batteries at around £50 per month and each 50 mile charge will cost £1 at today's electricity prices. So your running costs are not that much cheaper. It doesn't bother me that the Twizzy isn't really a car but a four wheel scooter as it is a tool I am looking for to do a job not a label! 

 Renault Twizy - funky little urban electric car

Audi is bringing out an electric car, I think in 2013 which looks interesting but not very good for British urban traffic calming road humps!

Audi electric concept car

In the meantime I am continuing to work on my Raffo Belva sports car re-build project, with the help of a local garage. I'm putting a 2 litre Vauxhall diesel engine into a plastic bodied car of half the donor vehicle's weight and as aerodynamic as a straight plank of wood being placed along the front bonnet and windscreen. It will run on vegetable oil. No leaks here or complex computerised car management system other than basic engine management ECU. All the other electric's will be carefully and individually wired by me and sited right where I can access every single fuse and relay in the cockpit.

Raffo Belva no 7 being re-designed and re-built by Jeremy Broun

If I applied the design strategy car designers/manufacturers wilfully employ to my furniture designs I would be a millionaire in 'after car' costs. I might even use their sales slogans. One manufacturer's website caption is 'if you are vague about ethics you know where to focus your attention...' or words to that effect. 

The fixer - part 2

     I removed an earlier entry called 'The Fixer' about Jimmy Saville

    It was obviously written before the shocking revelations and like countless other people I immediately condemned him. I still do if what is alleged about him is proven to be true.

   However, I will use this space just to say that horrendous though the evidence seems to be stacking up (I write this in october 2012) the question I cannot help but ask, apart from the obvious one of why nobody did anything about his alleged exploits over four decades (what!!!), is why is it that he achieved so much in helping so many people when so many others failed?  Put another way, what kind of person does it take to get things to happen other than a Jimmy Saville because he was apparently 'unique'! 

      There is something in this that also reflects on society and society is made up of individuals like you and me.  I happen to know someone who's life was probably saved by Jimmy Saville over twenty years ago in his arranging an 'ambulance' service from Italy back to the UK. The person may have suffered dire consequences but for the initiative of Mr Saville where timing was crucial.
      There must be other examples of how people's lives had been changed in more than trivial ways? This is nothing to do with Jimmy Saville the alleged sex fiend but Jimmy Saville 'The Fixer' as he was known for decades. Are any of the journalist vultures asking any of the people's who's lives were fixed in a positive way what they feel right now? Difficult and awkward probably for them not to speak of the burden of shame now resting on his family, but our focus is to crucify. It is slightly alarming that we do this before evidence has actually been firmly established.

   Is it not possible to say yes these are terrible crimes but yes he also did good and raised millions of pounds? In the 21st Century are we not capable of dual thought?

There is also a sinister thread of hypocrisy running through the almost medaeival lynch mentality fevering the nation right now when domestic violence is at an all time high and we still have bankers who have ruined the lives of many.  

   My little understanding of Christianity (that is supposed to be our core religion in Britain) is that good can come from evil. To my simple mind I could imagine a conflict of God and the Devil fighting over the same will and agreeing to compromise and this evil and good can go alongside each other. The same energy of nuclear fission provides light and warmth and also kills. There is no light without shadow, no black without white, but plenty of shades of grey. 

The JKB Window Hook Roof Platform

         The JKB Window Hook roof platform is a custom built device for hooking onto a dormer window and resting on the roof tiles in order to undertake repairs/maintenance. It saves hundreds of pounds in scaffolding costs and can be stored away in two separate parts after use. Made from stout 18mm exterior grade plywood and sandwiched at the hook in three thicknesses of material, it is screwed and glued together and lacquered with two coats of matt polyurethane varnish and one top coat of yacht varnish. Job done!

The JKB Window Hook platform. Copyright Jeremy Broun 2012

      It took longer to design the concept than build it and its hook profile and general angled geometry is made to measure for my particular roof. I had already constructed a roof ladder (see my You Tube WOODOMAIN channel) from a couple of bundles of batten so this is also a very low cost solution for servicing my roof and dormer window. Both sections of the platform are 48" long, conveniently coming out of an eight by four sheet and it makes lifting into position and storage easier. 
     

Looking down on the platform from the dormer window flat roof

        There is an extra hitch point where the two holes are to anchor the end of the platform to the dormer roof upright. I used rope but envisage constructing a metal strap that simply hooks into place. The two sections are fixed together in situ with stout stainless steel screws with the larger hole as a viewing hole to locate the screw. Each section is light enough to manoeuvre through the dormer window opening and fix into place on the roof and the hooks amply clear the window sill and flashing if repairs are needed there, which in my case they did. 

The platform is made in two sections for ease of mobility and storage

       If you are a woodworker/housebuilder who would like to use my idea all I ask for is an acknowledgment or better still buy my Routing DVDs (from WOODOMAIN.com) as a thank you for my ideas. It would cost me too much to patent many of my ideas but I believe in the universal law of what goes around comes around. My device may be featured in a future issue of 'British Woodworking' magazine as an example of resourceful woodworking. I intend doing my own roof repairs for as long as I am active. If you use the idea and make a similar window hook platform I cannot accept any responsibility for its safety, not least because build quality is important. If you are 25 stone heavy obviously the way I have built mine would not be strong enough. Safety always comes first and it is imperative to use an anchored safety harness when working on a roof.





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Passion for design

        Probably the most successful British chair of the 20th Century is the polypropylene  stacking chair by Robin Day for Hille International. The tooling costs were around £60,000 and it retailed at under £5. I was always inspired as a designer maker by the giants of mass produced innovation and found myself an increasingly reluctant member of an exclusive social club - British Designer Makers from the 1970's onwards.  I did work on the shop floor of a furniture factory as a trainee designer in 1973 but found the British mass production furniture industry depressing in the 1970's.

Stacking chair by Robin Day for Hille (1966)

      However, another icon of late 20th Century furniture design recently caught my eye in a local 'junk' shop which was a must have for me - four 'Supporto' chairs by Fred Scott, also for Hille International. I only want one for my quirky office but I am having to buy all four and hope to pass the others on. This is the classic original ergonomically designed modern office chair but most in my heritage city would be ignorant of its existence.

                             

'Supporto' chair by Fred Scott for Hille (1979)

      It is not the first time I have picked up a scoop locally. A couple of decades ago. I picked up a classic Harry Bertoia chair from my local market for £5 and use that in my home. Who is Harry Bertoia you ask? We know who Simon Colwell is or that playboy Harry who poses naked on the front of our respected tabloid newspapers. Oh yes, his cousin (uncle) David called on me a few years ago asking me to make some of his to furniture and emboss his Royal stamp on my craftsmanship.

                                 

Harry Bertoia chair (1957)

         But back to the plot - my passion for furniture design is re-kindled when I see a classic modern chair and my home is just too full of chairs so I am having to build a separate sealed storage area for my micro museum! The very first chair I made was actually a copy of 'The Chair' by Hans Wegner and I delighted in spokeshaving the arms which are highly sculptural. I made it out of teak when I was 17 and it was one of my major pieces when I was at Shoreditch College, so I must have made that chair in 1966 and all it needs today is a fresh smearing of Danish oil. The cane seat is still immaculate despite occasional use over the years. At a recent lecture by the furniture designer John Makepeace he referred to using silver wire as being 'more substantial' than cane for the seating of a chair, but his chair is younger than my copy of Hans Vegner's chair, but has noticeable cracks on its ebony joints! Am I allowed to challenge 'The Father of British Furniture Design'?! Is furniture lacking critical debate?

'The chair' by Hans Vegner (1949)

I think it is important to know our history. I visited the Cheltenham Celebration of Craftsmanship exhibition last week and apart from feeling somewhat let down by the chairs on show (the public chair competition), noticed a table by a maker that was an exact copy of a table by a designer maker friend of mine - John Coleman in the 1980's. I actually could not bring myself to mention this to the exhibitor so here I am referring to it on my blog. But surely in this age of 'graduate masters degree' furniture maker they have studied their history, especially the recent history of designer makers? In my Furniture Today DVDs the history is detailed with hundreds of images of furniture design and many colleges stock my DVDs. 

Veneered Table by John Coleman 

'Maker Designers Today' exhibition at Camden Arts Centre 1984

         I am certainly not accusing this maker of blatant copying as the design possesses a certain structural rationale that could be conceived by more than one mind. But in a previous exhibition there was a submission for not just a direct copy of a classic design but the design itself, a stool was used and the top just re-veneered in burn walnut which stuck out like a sore thumb! I alerted the exhibition curator but goodness me I am not a member of the design Police but just dumbfounded at - ignorance? 

Laminated birch stool by Alvar Aalto (1933)

          The wonderful thing about furniture design history is that it may be far from popular culture but it has a lasting and satisfying dimension to it and something to pass on. On my 90th birthday I intend holding a retrospective exhibition of my furniture designs and also show my chair collection which one day will be handed down.

  Cantilever chair in elm by Jeremy Broun (1984)

 inspired by Marcel Breuer's 'Chair with no legs' (1927)

          The designer Ron Arad once said to me 'a chair should have a very good reason for being'*. I would agree with that. It would be arrogant to claim total originality as we all know ideas come from somewhere and I think at least if one is inspired by one design to create another, the source should at least be acknowledged as a respect for that designer. But what does that silly old-fashioned term 'respect ' mean today? 

* 'The Chair' video 1990 (now on DVD) by Jeremy Broun

What is wrong with fairness?

            Deputy prime minister Nick Clegg says the very rich should help a bit more in dipping into their pockets to help the country during these dark times. He is referring to those with 'very considerable' wealth and for a limited period. The opposition says he is 'taking British people for fools'.  

           Who are the 'British people' today ? I see an increasing divide between the considerably wealthy and the considerably struggling to the point of obscenity. The opposition blow the conservative trumpet claiming that raising tax will drive the very rich abroad, but hang on, aren't they aware that there is nowhere to go! There is a global recession with even China struggling right now! And isn't the labour party about fairness for all?
         When Nick Clegg made this statement I immediately thought of Hitachi Power Tools. I am, after all, a carpenter not a politician. During the last deep recession in Japan, all the global Hitachi partners ploughed back every penny of profit into their head office to help Japan get back on its feet. I know this because at the time I had close liaisons with Hitachi Power Tools UK as they had generously supplied me with tools for the writing of my books and production of videos. Suffice to say the cordless drills and stout jigsaws I still use today. As a result of tightening their belt Hitachi fell slightly behind regarding brand promotion in the UK but the proof is in the durability of their products.

A Hitachi jigsaw given to Jeremy Broun in 1989 and still in use in 2012

         I think the stupidity is in this continued blind self-interest in Britain and blatant greed and justification of each faction (political) when the country is in a very serious mess indeed and tightening the belt is what a generation who remember the last war will relate to.  What is wrong with fairness?

Damaged goods

        Watching the Paralympics adverts makes me a little angry. It is not just that in almost every other field Health & safety would have something to say about two people wilfully colliding into each other in a potentially dangerous wheeled device,  but that to lose a limb and fight against all odds is considered highly admirable and commendable and yet  to be 'wheel bound' with depression is a taboo. Strong words to compare the state of depression to a physical paralysis but actually its true. I pick up on the anger that some physically disabled people have and perhaps I am guessing to suggest that anger is a motivating force for some of these athletes. 

        I was very fortunate to be born a healthy physical specimen. I have even escaped broken bones from a high speed motorcycle spill and today I limp with an Achilles heel (badminton) injury trying to walk my dog. But the greatest Achilles heel injury is the lack of motivation to start another Monday, another week. I am trying to complete a dormer window repair on my roof and put the last few pieces of timber cladding up. There was a time in my younger days when I was at least three times quicker than the average woodworker. Today it is taking me hours to just cut with a saw two pieces of softwood.

Who is going to repair your roof when you get old? 

        Imagine not being able to tie up your shoe laces. That is how depression can affect the mind, an otherwise agile and capable mind. I am not saying that today I cannot tie up my boot laces to walk my dog but the ritual has reminded me that actually at the depth of paralysing depression I don't know how to tie up my shoe laces. No doctor has ever asked me to perform the task. It would not enter their heads that this seemingly automatic ritual is a highly complex motor skill and quite relevant to some forms of depression. Instead the question is what medication worked for you before. The greatest act of will is to keep off damaging medication. 

A shoe rack designed by Jeremy Broun for Good Woodworking magazine readers to make (1990's)

      Healthy normal people take so many things for granted - that they are loveable and can love and have a right and expect to be loved. Some go through life never knowing what it is like not to be loved. Of course everyone is damaged in some way but if you never had a mother to show you what love is and a father who beat the shit out of you, how on earth can you learn it? In the playground? I don't think so.

       I am angry also today because I tried hard to follow the Christian doctrine throughout my life and for many years was encouraged to believe in God, the creator. Am I allowed to ask a childlike question: 'Well, who created God?' So we go through the ritual of counting blessings and cognitive therapy (that is so f..ing impossible to do) and going through a list of positive affirmations we arrive at the simple conclusion - to take each moment as it comes. 

       Perhaps wood is a gift from God to channel creative energy into or is it a chance material there for its own purpose but we got our hands on it? I am at least confident that I can build anything in wood (albeit on  a good day) and I may be forgotten as a craftsman but I have not finished making yet. Perhaps one has to endure the bad days (years) to look forward to the better ones.

    Depression may be a taboo but my observation is that people who suffer mental anguish often have an unusual awareness that makes their condition even more isolating. I came across a startling piece of furniture design on a website - a sculptural chair in stainless steel and was staggered to learn it sells for around £70,000. No wonder I am a forgotten craftsman! But I won't forget my ideals.

     An acquaintance knocked on my door last week asking to stay overnight in order to see his young children the next day. He had been kicked out of his nest by his partner and was in a terrible state. I had performed guitar gigs with him and his creative career is now on the verge of blossoming. I encouraged him to hold onto his creativity but his reliance on a 'relationship' was very apparent. It took me many many years to learn the lesson that I did not need another half to make me feel a whole person.  A very painful lesson and even more painful in the realisation this 'whole' person is full of holes! But my friend's creativity (like mine) is a precious gift and all I can do is encourage him in whatever small way I can that creativity pulls you through. 

       So, my dear reader, whoever you are, I feel a little better getting this off my chest. One of my tasks today is to process a substantial order of my woodworking/furniture making DVDs to send to the USA. There is no logical explanation that I cannot be motivated to respond instantly to somebody who values my work and says in an email 'I look forward to learning from you'. Lets hope my DVDs will not arrive as 'damaged goods'

.

A unique collection of instructional and documentary style DVDs

Furniture Today 3 - showing the best of British contemporary furniture

against a historical backcloth. (2012)

Andrew Varah

        Andrew Varah died in July 2012, delivering something of a shock to the British bespoke furniture making community where he had become a distinguished figure; the bloke I recall from my student days, who always sat at the top table, and where after a late start in the furniture making world, he arrived. It was little surprise he was ambitious as he was the son of Chad Varah, the founder of the Samaritans suicide telephone line, member of MENSA and his mother, head of the Mothers Union Europe. Andy was a triplet and identical twin.

        I first met Andrew in 1963 as a fellow student at the legendary Shoreditch Teacher Training College in Surrey. In our second year Andrew got me a room in the sought after old college building alongside his close mates Geoff Buckland, John Eustace and Max Carter. I suppose the obvious thing we all had in common was that we spoke without an accent and so it was probably a class thing. I guess in retrospect we were an elite group although I saw ourselves as different rather than better than the main core of trainee handicraft teachers. We tended to be more independent minded.
           Shoreditch College was a fantastic training not just in woodworking skills but in other craft disciplines such as metalworking, basketmaking, pottery and bookbinding and we had the very best practitioners in the country as tutors. My God those were the days and I shed a tear on the very last day of my training looking over Runnymede from the college campus, thinking it will never be as good as this again. Shoreditch was renowned for supplying not only the best teachers but the pranks that went on at the college were legendary.
         From one of the towers in our residential building I recall being roped in by an errant third year student to spray one of the college tutors on duty with a fire water hose and later hiding in Andrew's wardrobe while the search party sifted through the study bedrooms. Andrew was sitting in bed wearing a nightcap, reading a book, innocently pointing to the open window which happened to be four storeys up and telling the tutor 'maybe they went that way'. I was nearly kicked out as an example to other students but I went on to gain a Distinction on the Advanced Woodwork course while Andrew became social secretary and was out with the girls rather than pushing his cabinetmaking skills. 
      Andy helped me buy my first Morgan three-wheeler and we drove out to secluded pubs in Virginia Water in it and even attended a party in Surrey held by John Gregson the actor. The three-wheeler had no reverse gear and on one occasion we plunged through somebody's garden fence in Bagshot. We shared many fun experiences lasting into our thirties. 

The first 1933 Morgan three-wheeler arrives on the Shoreditch College campus
in 1962, causing a sensation amongst students and staff. 

I took Andy salmon poaching on wild Scottish rivers (my home was in Scotland) and on our last day of the trip I said  'I can't send you back to London empty handed'. While my older sister stood lookout for the bailiff, I hooked the salmon and Andrew landed it. 
     

I hooked the salmon and Andy landed it

 - an apt description of our furniture making careers. (1968)

On a furniture travel scholarship abroad my car was stolen and he offered to drive over to Holland to pick me up. I managed to get an old banger and arrived back from a 24-hour drive straight from Italy to his barn workshops near Rugby and he was the first to see all the exciting items of innovative furniture I had been given.

The old banger loaded with gifts from Artek, Cassina Artemide etc 

- first port of call Andrew Varah's pad 1979

     At the beginning of our careers Andrew and I taught in tough London schools and met up in our respective school workshops after school hours to brainstorm designs for school projects. We were pioneers of design in schools a decade before Design Craft Technology became officially part of the curriculum. We both left teaching after two years and Andy went to work in Zambia running a furniture factory. He invited me over to be his designer but my phobia for injections stopped that. He returned around 1974 but in preceding years had written to me many times asking what it was like to be a 'designer maker' and saying he wanted to do what I was doing back in England. 
    He set up as a solo maker and so our contact was much closer. I visited him many times at Little Walton, mucking into the renovations of his barn workshop. He had a fantastic pad while I was working in a tiny underground city workshop without natural light. A strange contrast as at the time he was an unknown and I was well acknowledged in the field by galleries and magazines. Around 1979
I introduced him to the Prestcote Gallery and remember his very first exhibit there, an inlaid table in ash. It was a electric time as the new boys exhibited alongside the old boys; A Fred Baier chair sitting next to an Edward Barnsley table.

An ash table by Andrew Varah circa 1976

Perhaps ashamed of my own somewhat modest workshop I turned down an opportunity in 1989 to be filmed for a regional television craft documentary and introduced the film director Trevor Hill to Andrew Varah who at that time had just taken on the genius woodworker Andrew Whately from John Makepeace's workshop. I think it was Andrew's first television exposure and at that time a rare insight into the work of furniture designer makers. Jan Leeming, ex News reader was the presenter. 

A chair by Andrew Varah around the time of the first television feature 

     Andrew delighted in pleasing his clients and working to their needs, often adding whims drawn from different architectural periods making his actual designs somewhat derivative and overplayed in clever craftsmanship in my opinion. I felt he became a bit of an 'untouchable' in terms of design critique but then there are no critics of bespoke modern furniture! If it were a West End play the performances would be torn apart by ruthless critics (Kiera Knightly playing Anna Karenina)! But design apart, Andrew Varah became a formidable maker and guiding light to a new blossoming generation of furniture designer makers. It was the late Alan Peters (who also trained at Shoreditch College) who said in 1974 this is surely the most difficult craft to sustain.  
        I still have some prime quality flitch cut English oak Andrew sold me at cost price in the year of the drought in 1976 and some Rio rosewood veneer he gave me on the same occasion. In our halcyon days Andy would often get to meet the girls I dated and would say 'I can't believe how you can pull the most beautiful birds' yet he could pull the most prestigious clients and was really in a different league running a furniture business and employing talented young craftsmen, many of whom stayed for decades.
 There was obviously rivalry between Andrew nyself. Even as students he once told me he could run as fast without training as his identical twin brother Mike who was running 800 yards for Britain. I told him he was arrogant and challenged him to run around the college track. He beat me after 26 laps and I was in the college athletics team and he wasn't! Curiously as my furniture 'career' suffered because of depression in my life I once admitted to Andy I had often phoned up his old man's outfit the Samaritans. I got the impression Andy did not get to see much of his father in his youth. Despite our more recent fall outs, we exchanged an amicable conversation at our last chance meeting at an exhibition in Cheltenham where we were both judges for different awards. 
      I made a film including him called 'Five Ways to Fashion Wood' in 1989 and a light-hearted clip called 'Three wise men' in 2005:  

   

Inevitably Andy and I followed different paths, but nothing can take away our early formative and fun years.  Varah RIP.