Professional Profiles Archives - Chippendale School of Furniture

Taking a Chance on an Overseas School: Scott Grove Teaches Veneering at Chippendale School

Scott Grove, an award-winning New York artist, sculptor and woodworker, delivered an inspiring, week long veneering course to last year’s students at the Chippendale International School of Furniture near Edinburgh. This was his first ever course at a UK furniture making school and he’s coming back to teach this year’s students. This is the blog about his visit to the furniture school.

When I was asked to teach at The Chippendale International School of Furniture in Scotland, I jumped at the chance but wasn’t sure exactly what I was getting myself into. As it turned out, neither did they. It was a mutual gamble taken by both parties that yielded a great experience and exchange of knowledge. And the scotch and ale was pretty good too.

The Chippendale School offers a complete and diverse curriculum and brings in various experts to teach specialized skill sets. Travelling to the United Kingdom to introduce my pioneered veneering techniques was certainly an honor, but I wondered, would they be open to such innovative and unconventional practices? Would I even be able to understand what they were saying through their Scottish brogue?

Chippendale School Students Learn Wood Veneering from New York Furniture Artist, Scott Grove

Scott Grove, an American artist, sculptor and woodworker, has just delivered an inspiring, week long wood veneering course to the 20 students at the Chippendale International School of Furniture.

“I was very impressed by how much the students achieve while they’re here and how ambitious they are with their pieces of furniture. It’s a wonderfully creative stew,” says Scott.

Scott Gove, who has his workshop in New York, is a third generation artist who specialises in wood veneers. He designs and creates furniture, sculpture, architectural reproductions, interiors, films, and other art using multiple media and many disciplines. Art furniture is his genre and his eclectic work is known for its layers of artistic expression, sophistication, elegance and ‘touch of whimsy’.

Inspirational Lectures on Thomas Chippendale and Furniture History

David Jones & Dr Lucy Worsley discussing Thomas Chippendale at Dumfries House.

An interview with leading furniture historian David Jones of St Andrews University, who has been delivering keynote lectures on the Life and Times of Thomas Chippendale at the Chippendale International School of Furniture for more than 12 years.

“Students at the Chippendale International School of Furniture learn about different furniture making styles, and how to take the best ideas from the past and adapt them to modern needs. Diversity and practicality are key features of the furniture design course,” says David Jones.

With a focus on Thomas Chippendale, David Jones’ furniture history talks also include a lecture on modern furniture from the 1950’s up to the present day. This takes in ‘experimental modernism’ in Italy (Fornasetti), American furniture makers (Charles and Ray Eames) and concludes with leading contemporary furniture designers like Angus Ross, based in Aberfeldy in Scotland.

“It’s the highlight of my year because everyone at the School is so eager to learn. Anselm creates a great atmosphere and there’s always lots of jollity,” says David Jones.

He explains that Thomas Chippendale had strong connections with Scotland which are still evident today. That’s why you can see some of his best commissions at Blair Castle north of Perth, at Dumfries House in south west Scotland, and at Paxton House near Berwick. See more of Dumfries House and Thomas Chippendale in this video.

Students from the Chippendale School of Furniture have opportunities to see Thomas Chippendale’s furniture first hand on inspiring field trips to many of these houses.

David Jones gives some background on Thomas Chippendale:

“He was born into a family of cabinetmakers and woodworkers in the town of Otley in Yorkshire. Thomas Chippendale’s fame spread when he published ‘The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker’s Director’ in 1754, his pioneering pattern book of furniture designs.

“His talents for cabinet making were spotted by wealthy Scotsmen, James Rannie, a shipping investor from Edinburgh, and some founders of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club in St Andrews. They helped set up the young craftsman in a three storey workshop in London’s St Martin’s Lane. The area had a thriving artistic and design community where the Rococo style flourished, and was close to St Martin’s Academy founded by William Hogarth.

“Within Chippendale’s ‘Cabinet and Upholstery Warehouse’, there were workshops for cabinet makers, upholsterers and glass workers; feather and carpet rooms; workshops for veneers and forgers; as well as stores and drying rooms. About forty craftsmen worked there.

“In the ‘Director’, Thomas Chippendale tamed the ornate Rococo style which came from France in the 1730s. With its wildly curvaceous virtuoso carving, Rococo was difficult to recreate. Chippendale created simplified designs that ‘could be made by any capable workman’, making stylish furniture accessible to a new class of people.

“Thomas Chippendale fed the hunger for modernisation in Scotland after the Jacobite uprising in 1745. This was a period of stability in Scotland that led up to the Scottish Enlightenment. Encouraged by greater prosperity, the Scots concentrated on trading and building new houses. From 1754 to 1790, the manufacturing of Chippendale furniture was part of this rebuilding and cultural awakening, and his furniture was used to furnish many of the most stylish houses.”

David Jones, furniture history lecturer, at Dumfries House.

David Jones became interested in furniture as a child, inspired by relatives in Wales who had a home full of enchanting furniture. He worked at Temple Newsam House outside Leeds in the north of England with its significant collection of Chippendale furniture.

David went on to study history and history of art at university, then worked in museums where, following his passion, he grasped the chance to look after their furniture collections. David’s opportunity to teach furniture history came up during the 1980’s when he proposed the creation of a new course on the history of furniture at St Andrews University. The rest, as they say, is history.

To learn more about Thomas Chippendale, you can watch a video of David Jones being interviewed in Dumfries House by historian Dr Lucy Worsley on BBC2’s Antiques Uncovered. David introduces one of the finest collections of Thomas Chippendale’s furniture and Anselm Fraser demonstrates how to make the legs of a Chippendale chair at the Furniture School. (David stars between 2 and 5 minutes from the start of the video. The interview with Anselm Fraser at the School follows from 5 to 9 minutes from the start). We are grateful to Silver River Productions for allowing us to show this video. Check out the Chippendale School of Furniture YouTube Channel for this and other videos about the Furniture School.

Learning the skilled techniques of furniture restoration

Restoring the table from the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh

A conversation with Simon Macintyre, a specialist tutor in fine furniture restoration who runs his own restoration business in West Sussex in England.

Simon Macintyre is one of the visiting external tutors at the Chippendale International School of Furniture. He teaches the skilled techniques involved in fine furniture restoration for a week in the first term and a second week in the third term.

“Learning about furniture restoration allows the students to relive the experience of furniture making over the last 400 years”, Simon says. “The furniture students learn the principles of good furniture construction and are shown how, unfortunately, style can sometimes triumph over function.

“I love teaching the students here. We all worked on restoring a large round table from the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh: this involved various veneer and carcass repairs and laying a large leather top. It’s a steep learning curve but most students rise spectacularly to the challenges and grow demonstrably during the furniture restoration course.

“We’ve also restored chests of drawers, card tables, long case clocks, bureaux and dining room chairs (which tend to take a lot of daily punishment!). The students can be quite reserved initially but they really get into it by the end of the furniture restoration course.”

The dilapidated table before its restoration.

Simon thinks that the “Furniture School works very well. The furniture course has an extremely well structured programme. The students know what to expect each week, and the pastoral care is also good; the students get help with finding accommodation, and Izzy helps them integrate with the local community, encouraging them to go to ceilidhs and other events.”

Simon trained with Anselm Fraser, the furniture school Principal, in 1981-82. His workshop is in the Norfolk Estate’s village joiner’s shop in Arundel. The Duke of Norfolk leads one of England’s best known Catholic dynasties with a lineage going all the way back to 1066 and the Norman Conquest.

Simon works on private furniture restoration commissions as well as for the antique trade. His famous clients have included: rock musician Brian Ferry; the sculptor Philip Jackson, well known for creating seven big bronze bomber crew statues for St James’s Park in London; the Benson family, founders of Kleinwort Benson fame; and the Bonham Carters, who number Hollywood star Helen Bonham Carter.

The furniture restorer’s projects are mostly 17th, 18th and 19th century English furniture, including Chippendale Furniture, although they have also spanned rare Elizabethan and Jacobean furniture. He particularly likes Queen Anne furniture and the simplicity of early Georgian pieces, which he describes as “quintessential English furniture”.

Simon says that “the quality of the materials used for making furniture has fallen steadily over the centuries. Wood which is currently commercially available, might still have the same name, as with ‘mahogany’ for example, but that’s where the similarity ends. I have to source 30 different species of tropical hard woods and veneers, many of which are now protected and commercially unavailable, so have to be continually on the look out for rare hardwoods; I recently managed to track down a trunk of 100 year old rosewood in a garage in the Channel Islands.

“The furniture restoration techniques I use have to be a lot less mechanised than at the school. Most of the restoration work has to be done with high quality hand tools made of decent steel with sharp edges. Modern tools are often sub-standard.

“I work with the original style of the piece and try to get inside the craftsman’s head. Projects often involve repairing damaged veneers and renewing old polish finishes.

“I once restored a case for a bracket clock made by England’s foremost clockmaker, Thomas Tompian, worth a quarter of a million pounds. Another interesting piece was a Guernsey tea table which had been wrecked by occupying German troops during the Second World War.”

Thomas Tompian bracket clock

Returning to his furniture restoration courses at the school, Simon Macintyre says:

“I teach the furniture school students the correct restoration procedures. To avoid devaluing a piece of antique furniture, they need to understand it before starting work. Undoing the poor restoration work done by others is the bane of a furniture restorer’s life; you can find nails or screws in loose joints that have caused a lot of damage, and other poor quality repairs.

“The students learn how to be exacting with their estimates and about the importance of developing good client relationships. They have to learn to consult and talk through issues that emerge. I teach them not to lower their commission prices too much so they can afford to do a good job without cutting corners.

“I give talks on the different furniture styles and features for particular periods. The students get a good grounding of knowledge and go on to learn by experience.

“Many of the students keep in touch with me after I’ve headed back south.”

Simon Macintyre can be contacted at macintyre641@aol.com or on 01903 883387.

Chippendale School of Furniture’s Anselm Fraser fuses big sky thinking with commercial savvy

Main part of a feature published in Good Woodworking in Growth Rings in October 2011. Reproduced with thanks. Words: Darren Loucaides. Photos: Dave Roberts.

As mist settles on the hills surrounding this secluded spot in Gifford, 25 miles east of Edinburgh, it feels like we’ve happened upon a deserted country house. Chippendale International School of Furniture is out for summer, and stalking around its exhibition hall, quiet but for our footfall thundering across the rugged floorboards, the atmosphere is eerie. Perhaps we’re hearing distant echoes, glimpses of movement just beyond our vision – hints of the life that usually fills the place.

The various wooden creations, like stage props solemnly awaiting their moment in the limelight, only add to the feeling: there’s an Art Deco dressing table, an unfinished rocking horse, a solid all-burr dining table, and a grand chair you’d expect to find nestled deep within the boughs of a magical forest (but is actually destined for the Edinburgh Book Festival). You wonder what kind of curriculum could spawn such an eclectic mix of furniture.

The answer lies with Anselm Fraser, Chippendale’s Principal and founder, who appears before us like the house’s enigmatic phantom. He’s wearing odd boots – one blue, the other gold – and string braces decorated with metal leaves, which provide a handy ‘in’ for understanding the man: on the one hand, they’re a symptom of someone who doesn’t mind being thought eccentric; on the other hand, they’re a marketing tool that easily identifies him. All the people we’ll meet over the coming months during our northern adventures will recognise Anselm – “You know, the chap with the blue and gold boots, and the funny braces” – and have heard something of his distinctive approach. He’s a showman and an entrepreneur, a craftsman and a pragmatist.

You can read The Strategy of Creativity from Good Woodworking here.

This unique mix – Anselm’s very spirit – lies at the very heart of the School. For £16,950 it provides an intense 30-week crash course in furniture making, but also commercial nous: “This is a business school,” Anselm says, “not just a furniture school.” And yet, as is evidenced by the work all around us, the students are also receiving a potent creative stimulus. This is a place for big sky-thinking inspired by the wide horizons of the location
itself…an idyllic base from which to plot your next move.

Oil rigger, egg trader, woodworker

It was a bit of big-sky thinking, fused with realpolitik, that led Anselm to purchase these former Myreside farmsteads for £100,000 back in 1992. He’d realised that, instead of breaking the bank buying a listed building that would serve as a country home and furniture school, he could fashion his own for a much better price.

Anselm Fraser’s house & the School of Furniture

Before this, though, Anselm had tried his hand at a number of occupations, ranging from a stint in the North Sea on the Brent Delta oil rig to egg marketing in the East Midlands. It was his dairy enterprise that revealed his knack for business: he managed to reduce his storage overheads to almost nothing by seeking out farmers with empty outbuildings. It wasn’t long, however, before the big boys were on to him: a national supplier waged a price war and eventually ran him out of town, but during his two years of trading, he’d generated enough capital for his next venture.

“With the next business,” Anselm explains, “I decided that I didn’t want to make a huge profit: that’s when people come after you, and I’m never going to let that happen again.” He turned his hand to woodworking, partly because, “it’s what I’d always wanted to do,” and partly because it’s difficult to make a living as a woodworker: “I was confident I wasn’t going to be wiped out by a rival, either. After 30 years this has proved to be true.”

He trained with antique furniture restorer Michael Hay-Will for one year, after which, “Off I went with my chisel and my brain,” and started his own business. Initially he concentrated on restoring, but as the market shrank, he started making furniture too. When Michael, his former tutor, died, another avenue presented itself to Anselm – teaching: “His wife simply said, ‘We have a student, can you help?’” Anselm agreed, and from this unexpected acorn grew the Anselm Fraser School of Antique Furniture Restoration, which would later evolve into the Myreside School of Furniture as Anselm began to focus more on furniture making.

Build it…

It was years before the school became a main priority, however; apart from furniture, Anselm was diversifying into property renovation and building projects. He would, and still does, cast his keen eye around for decrepit buildings to pounce on, which he’ll completely overhaul into grand houses like his own. He’s been making swoops far beyond the UK, too, with recent trips to Switzerland to work on wood cabins, and even building a school in Malawi.

You can see the imagination that he brings to this kind of work if you look at his own house. We find his woodwork covering almost every square inch. It’s neither conventional in an interior design sense, nor perfect from a
cabinetmaking point of view, but it’s full of character and charming idiosyncrasy. A house, he’s saying, isn’t just a house but a canvas for experimentation. Apart from the reverse moulds, he made faux stonework from
concrete for the doors, windows, and balustrades, made the floors from local timber that would’ve gone for firewood; there’s furniture made in the round; the kitchen reminds us of Bilbo Baggins’ Bag End (only rather bigger); there’s his ‘Harry Potter’ bed largely made from bark-on branches… “There’s one of my paintings,” he says, pointing at a canvas with steam-bent strips bursting out of it, or, elsewhere, a framed explosion of off-cuts
and paint. It’s all slightly bonkers, but it makes for a wonderfully experimental atmosphere.

Anselm Fraser, School Principal

This former farmstead, then, has evolved into a kind of creative outpost which now attracts students from around the globe looking to cross the boundaries of a typical woodwork course. This hasn’t happened over night, though.

…and they will come

By 2000, the house was for all intents and purposes ‘complete’, and Anselm was ready to expand after 15 years of training people on a more ad hoc basis. His first step was to find out whether he could rename it the Chippendale International School of Furniture.

“I spoke to the lawyers,” he says, “and they asked if I had international students, which I did,” and, with no copyright on the name, he went for it. The rebranding exercise has certainly helped Anselm in his efforts to build up the School and its reputation in recent years.

The school only took on five to 10 students while it found its feet, he explains, but now it’s reached critical mass with 20 students and 10 ‘incubators’ – former students who’ve stayed on to rent workshop space. He was also fully subscribed for next year back in May. Anselm doesn’t want it to expand any further, though, as the current size allows him to impart a healthy amount of his peculiar wisdom to each student. And keeping the numbers will mean that plenty of the students can continue to stay on as incubators.

What’s the magic formula, then, that has made the School so popular? It’s the two pronged approach, as we said at the start, of providing both making and business skills.

Building a craftsman

The course is 30 weeks long, and leaves students with a furniture making qualification and cabinet making qualification recognised by the Scottish Education Authority. “For the first two terms we have five tutors looking over 20 students,” says Anselm. “We work through a syllabus [approved by the SEA], and they’re taught to work to time tests.” He firmly believes that pushing students to work quickly is fundamental: “The trouble with setting up a business because you love woodwork is that you’re never going to make any money,” he argues. This isn’t to say that students are rushed along before they’re ready: “The biggest challenge is the first two weeks of the course,” he explains. “During this time you have to make them go slow like a tortoise; if you go fast like a hare, you have accidents.”

The students make a minimum of three pieces, including a traditional piece and a modern piece, though they are strongly encouraged to produce more.

“Quite early on, we get them to design something of their own,” Anselm says. “We want them to be great designers, and we think carefully about how to develop and expand them towards that aim.”

Business and pleasure

But alongside this practical course is that dynamic guidance given on how to make a living after the course.

“We teach them not to drop their old skills,” says Anselm, who believes it’s crucial that you utilise the full spectrum of your abilities, not just your woodworking talents.

“To make a living as a furniture maker, it’s going to be very lean for the first few years,” he says. “Don’t throw away your talents. Don’t come to me and say you’re only going to do furniture; you’ll starve…”

If you’re a taxi driver, for instance, Anselm will insist that you keep working your busiest hours and fit your woodworking into the quiet times, at least while you get started. “If you have no other talents, we’ll find something for you!”

His favourite word of advice is “diversify”: aside from using skills accumulated before coming here, he steers them towards other woodwork like restoration and house refits, like he does. The idea is to take pleasure in your making — “That’s why you go into woodwork,” Anselm says, “because you want to enjoy your work” — but to keep several streams of income going.

With such a head for business, it’s perhaps not surprising that Anselm feels embattled by some of the attitudes in the fine woodworking world: learning how to sharpen tools to within a thousanth of a millimetre, say, or perfecting seamless joints may be appealing, but they’ll probably lead you into financial ruin if you’re not careful.

“Have gaps in your dovetails!” Anselm cries. “They’re good to see,” which may seem like an odd thing to say, but the essential point carries weight: it’s far better to survive and create exciting furniture to a decent standard
than to risk everything in the so-called pursuit of excellence.

A way of thinking

When students pay £16,950 for a 30-week course, then, they’re buying into a way of thinking through Anselm. It’s his philosophy and character that make this much more than a furniture making school. Chippendale is a centre of craftsmanship and business sense, but also a breeding ground for ideas; a space within which to grow the confidence and ambition needed to be truly creative, but from where you can see the bigger picture, too. No wonder so many of the graduates are keen to rent space and join the Chippendale Incubation Centre unit: apart from securing access to well-maintained machinery and avoiding start-up costs, not to mention benefiting from the big sky thinking of this shared environment, they’ll continue to draw from the fountain of inspiration that is Anselm Fraser and his School.

The mist is lifting now, and we’re able to gaze out over the countryside and far into the distance. There’s an air of quiet before the storm: the workshops are relatively empty, stocked with a few students who’ve been allowed to finish their courses over the summer, tutors working on projects and preparing for the new year, and, of course, the incubators starting their new businesses. But by the time you’re reading this, Chippendale will be growing the latest crop of students, and it’ll be ‘all systems go’ again. Many of them will struggle at first to keep up with the pace and intensity of the course, but in passing on making skills and plenty of commercial savvy, Anselm’s curriculum amounts to a strategy for lasting creativity. Once they finish, after all, the next move is theirs, and they’ll need to call upon all their guile and tactics to succeed.

Simon Macintyre- Furniture Restorer

Simon Macintyre is a furniture restorer based in Arundel, West Sussex. He trained with Michael Hay-Will in 1981 (in the same class as Anselm) and set up shop a quarter of a mile down the road, where he has been restoring furniture ever since.
He is also a guest tutor on our cabinet making courses and for those who read our post about the Windsor chair restoration; it was under his expert guidance that it was brought back to its former glory.

And he is clearly not just an excellent furniture restorer, because while most of our students arrive here saying they have little interest in furniture restoration, the vast majority leave saying that furniture restoration is one of their biggest interests. One of last year’s graduates has even gone down South to work with him, so he must be doing something right!

He is a bit more modest. He believes that furniture restoration itself is what captures people’s imagination:

“There is a sense of history and tradition that accompanies restoring furniture,” he says. “You’re holding a piece that might be 300 years old, right in front of you, and you start wondering what the person who made it was like. Who has owned it? Who was the last person to polish it and restore it?”

Furniture Restoration vs Cabinet Making

He says that he understands why people might initially shy away from restoration. Even he started out thinking he wanted to be a cabinet maker, designing furniture. But he slowly came to realise that he had a greater aptitude for furniture restoration. He believes that cabinet making and furniture restoration feed the soul in different ways. “The ability to use a tool is a ‘skill’,” he muses, “whereas the ability to restore furniture is much more about having a ‘feel’.”

And so the pleasure comes not just from the sense of history and tradition, but from the nuts and bolts of revitalising antiques. “You have to imagine what the piece looked like in the past and you try to match that picture with a reality.” For Simon this means problem-solving and dealing with the subtle complexities of colour and patina.

For the Few, Not the Many

However, not everybody thinks the same way… Occasionally Simon will get an antique through the door that has been restored by a cowboy for whom restoration evidently means something completely different: “I do sometimes despair at what some people think it’s all about; trying to do furniture restoration with a pot of glue and a couple of nails is just plain wrong!” But by and large, taking apart history and breathing new life into old furniture is clearly as much a gentle lifestyle as it is a business for this man.

The Bottom Line

And what of the cabinet making? “While I still make the odd bit of furniture,” he says, “it’s not every day that someone walks through your door and orders a 3-piece suite. Restoration work is much more common.”

“But it’s never dull,” he adds. So despite the odd cold, grey, winter morning, he finds himself wanting to get up and go to work. Because even after 27 years on the job, he still finds it interesting, challenging and deeply rewarding.

Wepham Farm Stables
Wepham
Arundel
West Sussex
BN18 9RQ
01903 883387

macintyre641@aol.com

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