It‘s a beautiful art nouveau-inspired mantle clock that will always remind Vanessa Johnston of her grandmother who kept a similar clock on her mantelpiece. Vanessa, from Seattle, is making all her pieces, including the clock, from wych elm and olive ash, two timber species that aren’t native to the USA. The case of the clock …
The Chippendale school is associated with furniture design and making, so it’s not often that one of our students sets out to make a prosthetic tail for a dead cat. But that was part of the task that Dr Phillip Prager from Luxembourg has undertaken to upcycle a mummified cat into a golden work of …
The art of gilding may go back thousands of years, but that doesn’t mean that a bit of innovation can’t take place. So believes Richard Walker, who has been teaching this beautiful craft to students at the school for the past two weeks. Richard, one of Europe’s leading gilding experts, runs Watergild Studios and also …
Brian London, originally from North Carolina, is a retired law enforcement officer now living near Niort in France. His first project at the school was a Queen Anne-inspired gate-leg, drop-leaf table that will be a gift to his daughter. He chose the design because a round table of this design is better suited for smaller …
It’s destined to be a sewing table for his mother, but it’s also a celebration of complexity in olive ash and sycamore. The intricate design of Matt Hanley’s table required precision steam bending, and the ash veneers were all hand crafted. The table has a sycamore frame with olive ash legs and stretcher, and now …
It’s anything but a man’s world at the Chippendale school or, for our graduates, having a career as a fine furniture designer. This year, six of our students are women – from the UK, India, Trinidad & Tobago, New Zealand, and the USA. We’d like to encourage more women into woodworking because it involves design …
