How I Made it… Frazer A Reid, FAR Cabinet Makers

The Chippendale School has welcomed hundreds of students from around the world through its workshop doors. We are proud to have supported the careers of so many woodworkers from the start of their journeys, right up to setting up their own businesses.

Frazer A Reid set up FAR Cabinet Makers and Far Wooden Surfboards after studying at Chippendale School. He now combines his two big passions in life – woodworking and surfing – and gets to do what he loves every day.

Read on to find out more about this Fife-based maker’s journey into furniture making and life after Chippendale…

Read More

A current student’s story: James Bullen

At the Chippendale School, we welcome students from hugely diverse backgrounds to study the art of furniture making with us. Often, students have discovered a passion for woodworking that emerged later in life and are now acting on their enthusiasm to craft a fulfilling creative career.  

These career changers have often realised their former role wasn’t quite as fulfilling as it once was – and this is exactly what happened with current student James Bullen. 

James, a former commodities trader, left his role of 20 years as he felt that something was missing. He found it in woodworking – keep reading to find out all about James’ story and his experience of studying with us.  

Read More

How to run a sustainable furniture business

Sustainability should be an essential part of any business plan. With the ongoing climate emergency, woodworkers and furniture makers should be joining in the collective effort to go greener – but sustainability is also about creating a business that will last while benefitting its community, staff and customers.   

Jamie Wemyss is a former Chippendale School student, and since graduating he has created JMW Furniture, a successful business with sustainability at its heart. We spoke to Jamie to find out how aspiring woodworkers and furniture business owners can craft the most sustainable business model. 

Read More

Spalted console

A simple fact about bespoke furniture is that good design sells.

That’s a lesson that Fiona Gilfillan, one of recent professional course graduates has learned.

During her course, she made a spalted Sycamore and Elm console table, which sold at the graduate exhibition.

She was then commissioned by another customer to make a second console table.

Now she’s just completing a third, making her something of a console queen.

Fiona was the second student on our newly-introduced month-long intermediate course last year.

FeeMade

Then, despite not initially intending to make woodworking her life, she enrolled on our 2018/19 professional course.

Fiona is now setting up FeeMade from incubation space at the school.

Those spaces, Myreside Studios, are one of the ways we try to help graduates in their early careers.

Because we don’t believe that education and support should end when our students graduate.

Instead, in a more holistic approach, our Myreside Studios allow graduates to set themselves up in business from the school’s campus.

We give them good working space and full access to equipment and machinery.

They also have continued help from our tutors, so that they don’t have to feel isolated.

Myreside Studios

That’s important because our students build up close working relationships with other students, with everyone learning from each other.

Myreside Studios allow those working relationships to extend into professional life so that, in a very real sense, the school is a community of students and professional woodworkers.

Fiona also has one other claim to Chippendale woodworking fame.

She first came to us on a one-week introductory course, making her the only person to have completed all three of our courses.

Fiona is gifted and hard-working and we’re hugely pleased that she’s staying on at the school.

Note: Two places still remain for our professional course that starts next month.  More information here or contact us here.

Read More