This week is week twelve of the 2018/19 professional course, and we’re already nearing the half-way mark.

This week, the focus is on hinges and metal ageing, although students are also learning about, for example, gluing with a UV pen, domino accessories, hand-cut knuckle joints, and sanding mouldings.

As always, it’s a busy week, particularly with students now well underway with their first projects.

However, there is always time for a break and, as part of our programme of external visits, this week we’re off to Paxton House, a grand historic house in the Scottish Borders.

Paxton House is full of treasures including a nationally significant collection of Chippendale and Trotter furniture and masterpieces from the National Galleries of Scotland.

Our interest is, of course, primarily in the furniture on display.  But it’s also more than that because the more our students understand the past, and the influences that shape furniture design, the better they’ll be able to design their own pieces.

This trip to Paxton house on Thursday will be followed by a lecture at the school the next day from Professor David Jones, a world-renowned furniture historian who specialises in Chippendale furniture.

We’re also taking time out for a group discussion on hitting targets and how to cope with time pressure.

While those are the kinds of stresses that we all have in our daily lives, it’s something we like to address with our students – so that we can learn from each other, and help keep those everyday pressures in perspective.

The week, as with every week, will end with a Friday Fry-up.  It’s a ritual start to the last working day that the students dreamed up themselves – helped by the fact that one of them also breeds pigs!