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Chippendale Furniture School team inspired by restoring a Swiss chalet

The Swiss chalet the Chippendale Furniture team helped restore

A blog by Ali Easton (of Organic Geometry) and Anselm Fraser (Principal of the International Chippendale School of Furniture) about their working holiday restoring a Swiss chalet.

“Don’t get me wrong, I love my workshop in the Chippendale Incubation Centre. Looking south, I can raise my eyes from my vice and see the quiet woods and tended fields of East Lothian climb towards the Lammermuir hills that roll over the horizon. I’m a lucky man. But I was given an offer that would take me away from that and jumped at the chance.

“I’ve spent the last two years changing my daily life. I’ve moved from a desk to a work-bench, from Powerpoint to power-tools. I gave up my life as a project manager in technology, retrained and became a furniture designer and maker, running my own one-man furniture business.

“The offer came from my woodworking teacher and now mentor, Anselm Fraser. He stuck his head round the door and said there was some work I might be interested in. Why don’t I join him in Switzerland for a week or so, working on the restoration of some very old farmhouse chalets in the glorious mountains south of Lake Geneva. The Alps trump the Lammermuirs.

“My new life has centred completely around bespoke furniture, often meaning small scale and delicate; a world of fine joints, millimetre accuracy and transparent shavings from a terrifingly sharp plane. But as a woodworker it’s impossible not to be seduced by almost all forms of the craft. Buildings and the process of building with wood had begun to fascinate me almost from the moment I began my training. And anyway, who’s not a sucker for a beautiful Swiss chalet? The chance to work on one, in fact, to save it from ruin, to savour the rustic elegance of its lines, and feel the weathered Alpine pine on the blade, was an offer I could not refuse.

“Robert Louis Stevenson famously said ‘to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour.’ I travelled hopeful of learning, hopeful of broadening my woodworking experience. More prosaically though, I knew there would be some serious labour.

The chalet's wonderful balcony.

“It turned out to be a hugely enriching experience. Though, as anyone who has travelled to Switzerland will guess, not in a monetary sense. I was inundated with new ideas, new ways of working, and new techniques in wood. But of course these ideas were as old as the hills and had been known to the Swiss farmers who have lived for generations in these mountains. I just needed my eyes and let it all flood in, and what it gave me was a great respect for the people who had made what I was restoring.

“Staircases, consisting of two straight beams, laid across with great wedges of pine to form the treads, cut from sections of the round log, quartered along its length. Simple and quick to make, requiring so few tools.

“Massive roof rafters, simply felled trees, de-barked and hefted into place with manpower alone.

“Huge door hinges made entirely of wood, the vertical pins formed by carving away timber from the thick door jamb. And the matching barrel, a hole drilled in the horizontal rails on the door. The door simply drops into place, the barrels falling down over the pins. No metal work required, no screws to buy, so few tools required to make it. So elegant!

“These ancient solutions to everyday problems of living and shelter on a high Swiss mountainside have lots to say to us today. Firstly, these houses were built by the families who went on to live in them. In today’s world, surrounded by a dry, long-winded public debate about the benefits of university versus vocational studies, it’s refreshing to see that some people recognised what skills they needed to live life and just got on with it.

“Secondly, materials were local. Even today there’s no road in to these upper houses, just a very steep path through a forest. If you wanted to bring materials in then you would have to carry them on your back. It made sense to use what was around you, and in turn to manage the landscape carefully to ensure those materials were always going to be available. The forest is fuel, building materials, avalanche protection.

“In the modern building trade timber is considered one of the greenest building materials. The people who built these houses knew it instinctively and their descendents today still manage the forest with the long view, with intelligence and respect. The result: nature provides infinitely.

Amazingly simple wooden hinges!

“And waste is easily dealt with because almost everything was wood. Left in the open uncovered it will quickly rot back into the ground. Nutrients return to the soil and no landfill problems to worry about.

“I spent my time there soaking up the influences and ideas, enjoying the low-tech but ingenious designs, and realizing how these people had been able to build houses, furnish them and live in relative harmony with their environment.

“So having returned to my own furniture workshop, with the Lammermuirs again on the horizon, I reflect on the trip and what it means for wood craft here in modern Scotland. While the ancient Caledonian forest is largely gone, Scotland does have forests of both conifer and broadleaf, and the old rule still applies: if managed well, nature will provide infinitely.

“I work almost entirely in wood that comes from within 30 miles of my workshop. Locally we have some fabulous oak, elm, ash and sycamore, all with beautiful grain and figure (there’s some speculation that that’s a result of the battering these Scottish trees have taken from the weather). And there’s a vibrant scene of crafts people working all around the nation, from green oak house-frame builders, through unique bespoke furniture workshops to wooden jewellery makers.

“Local materials, local knowledge and local crafts people make a powerful combination, especially when inspired by the best the world has to offer. So by all means travel to Switzerland – you’ll love it – but you’ll find some beautiful wood craft on your own doorstep.”

Anselm Fraser, the Principal of the Chippendale School of Furniture, adds:

“Ali Easton, Graham Davies (one of the Furniture School’s tutors) and I had an inspiring time in Switzerland. A working holiday expands your horizons, and you come back refreshed, more creative and more profitable.

“Every year I do some building work, always during the summer months because I love being outside in the sunshine. One of the objectives of the course that I run at the Chippendale International School of Furniture is to show my students the big picture and that life is not about working solidly at the bench for 45 weeks of the year. How about only 35 weeks?

“To achieve this you need to diversify your business: making furniture is work, but using your woodworking skills overseas, building and restoring a wooden chalet is not really work and spices up your year!

“I like to open up the eyes of recent graduates to the many interesting things you can do with woodworking skills.

Simple but strong.

“When setting up your business you are supposed to write a business plan but that can be challenging when you can’t foretell the future of your business. You need more time, so we have a Business Incubation Centre at the school where recent graduates benefit from subsidised workshop space, and access to tools, machinery and some mentoring.”

Choosing your tree to make flawless furniture

An example of a warped plank compared to a well chosen unwarped plank

The Chippendale International School of Furniture, half an hour from Edinburgh, is situated in rolling East Lothian countryside close to fantastic mature forests of oak, elm, lime, ash, chestnut, sycamore and beech trees; an environment with all the raw materials needed to make flawless furniture.
“We teach students on our nine month course to plant a tree, choose a tree, fell it and plank it,” says Anselm Fraser, Chippendale Furniture School Principal.
“There is much more to selecting a good tree for furniture making than you might think. You need to understand the effects of shrinkage, defects in the wood and warp.”
Here are some of the useful tips that students at the furniture design school are given on how to choose wood for the furniture pieces that they make each term (you can see more photos on Flickr and slides on these tips) :
•    A hardwood tree should generally be about 150 to 200 years old. An oak tree, for example, should be about 200 years old. Trees that are too old usually suffer from rot and other defects, which means they often cannot be used for furniture making.
•    The wood in a felled tree dries out and shrinks as it ages. After 6 months you may see radial checks and splits towards the centre of the wood and tangential (clockwise or counter clockwise).
•    Boards cut from a fresh cut log will not show any shrinkage. However, after six months boards cut away from the heart of the log may show some warp due to tangential shrinkage. Shrinkage takes place around the growth rings. So, boards need to be cut from the centre of the log to reduce the chances of warp.
•    When shaped pieces of wood are cut too early from a log they will also end up distorting as the log seasons. Cut wood circles will end up more like ellipses, and square cut pieces can turn into parallelograms.
•    Stresses in a tree can appear in planks cut from it a year later! If a tree is in a windy location, the wood can become ‘cork screwed’. The wind can result in planks being springy, bowed, cupped or twisted. So, you should not buy a tree in an exposed windy location on the top of a hill or standing alone in the middle of a field.
•    Watch out for natural defects in a tree such as a cross grain, a diagonal grain or a spiral grain (also called ‘corkscrewed’), as well as the effects of knots.
•    These defects can also make it difficult to plane or work with pieces of timber: the fibres of growth rings may run in different directions, grains may be interlocked or wavy.
•    You also need to ensure that the tree is felled in the right way. Bad felling techniques can result in ‘shakes’ creating cracks in the heart of the log like a ring, a cup or a star.

“At Chippendale Furniture we have stocks of locally cut boards that we ‘air season’ outside in the yard. A 1” thick board needs to be air seasoned for 1 year; a 2” thick board for 2 years…. That is why buying 1” thick seasoned boards is significantly less expensive than 2” boards or 4” boards.

“Our students also learn to work with wood with attractive defects; these pieces can be used to make artistic furniture pieces like table tops and facings on drawers,” adds Anselm Fraser.
For details of Chippendale International School of Furniture’s intensive 9 month furniture design course, please visit www.chippendale.co.uk or www.chippendaleschool.com

Getting stuck in as a Chippendale Furniture School student

Furniture student, Rupert Phelps', versatile sideboard

A blog by Rupert Phelps, a former telecoms consultant

This is my blog about the 15 weeks that I have been at the Chippendale International School of Furniture.

I was a Senior Technical Telecoms Consultant working for a rather large blue chip organisation in the town of Staines in south-east England; back in May 2010 I decided to pack in my exceedingly dull, sedentary, paid, existence in leafy Middlesex suburbia for a new more physical, creative, self-motivated, countryside lifestyle. Most of my friends thought I might have been going through a midlife crisis; they might have been right, but it was a proactive midlife crisis at that!

The ultimate goal is to become a self-employed furniture maker and designer. With little or no woodworking skills, the quest was set.

The Friday before the start date, I handed over my laptop, mobile phone and security pass. I moved up to Gifford on the Saturday, drank tea on Sunday and started the course on Monday.

The opening lecture was a safety one which frankly I don’t think I’ll forget for a while. Anselm was showing us how to wrap up severed digits in a cool box, and how to get to the hospital in the vain hope that they could be sewn back on. Hmm, okay… what had I signed up to!

It was then straight into chiselling, sawing, planing a box to house a chisel sharpening stone and, once completed, we had to start designing our first term project. This was on the first day, it was mad, no messing, just get stuck in.

The First Term

<>The first 10 weeks involved getting used to hanging out with 16 new fellow students from all walks of life and ages (from 18 to 54), and folks from abroad (America, Belgium, Canada, Ireland, Germany via South Africa, England and, of course, Scotland). You also had to get used to the 5 lecturers and tutors, who all had alternative problem solving techniques. This is where you ask a question and you can get 5 alternative answers – at first you take them all as gospel but then find out you will have to choose the best one from the list. This is something you quickly get used to and, if the first method does not work, then the second or third just might! There are a million ways to cut a plank – we’ve yet to skin a cat though!

The other important thing is that you learn to get used to the large, scary machinery. Most of these machines have big green and red buttons. Before pressing the green button, you have to refer back to lesson one on day one – treat these tools with good care and attention and they will be kind to you. You get to know exactly where the red button is too!

Skills acquired in the first term included general woodwork joints including the iconic dovetail joint, strengthening keys, block building in the form of a giant hoola hoop, barley twist, upholstery, shaker box, tree identification, wood identification, tool of the day. You also get to start constructing your apprentice box which is improved and added to throughout the course.

The highlight for me, in the first term, was completing my first ever piece of furniture. A lounge sideboard which can house a lamp, a tv, magazines, family photos, pet photos, etc. The sideboard has yet to have a finish and polish applied (all covered in the second term). This is where you really learn furniture making and, interestingly, furniture design, all from working with wood and applying lots of trial and error.

The Second Term

Well we’re now 6 weeks into the second term. Again, another accelerated term of learning. This has included so far veneering with exotic woods, working with bendy plywood to create fun looking shapes, French polishing and finishes, boulle work, oyster work, marquetry, parquetry and continuation of tool of the day and tree identification. We have also been on a visit to Glasgow where we had a private view of the Burrell Collection furniture vault, Glasgow School of Art (designed by Rennie Mackintosh) and an exhibition of John Makepeace’s furniture.

We started our second furniture project which is a veneered piece. I’ve decided to build a desk using rosewood veneer and bendy plywood. There will be a whole host of issues to combat along with knowing that you will need to perform a number of corrections later in the construction process due to unforeseen circumstances – again, all good learning en route to becoming that furniture designer and maker.

Throughout the two terms we have also had morning lectures from Anselm on furniture history, health and safety, design and business techniques. These are a perfect length, a maximum of 30 minutes, just enough time to soak up various details to think about in the world of furniture making.

<>We also perform student stand ups, which involve a student discussing their project and possible issues that you might come up against. This allows everybody to scrutinise and give suggestions on design and construction solutions in an open forum.

Other highlights have included lunch around the nice warm stove, especially when it’s been snowing buckets, with friendly banter and laughter, and ‘Wednesday homemade soup day’. The local Goblin Ha’ pub is a popular venue and you get to know the locals very quickly indeed.

A Strathclyde police officer’s first impressions as a Chippendale Furniture student

Sean works on his grandfather clock at the Chippendale School of furniture

A blog by Sean McManus, furniture design student

Rapidly approaching the mid point of my course at the Chippendale School of Furniture I find myself reflecting on what has gone and, with some trepidation, to what has yet to come. To use the old cliché, it does seem like only yesterday I visited the school for the first time and was taken aback by the results achieved by the previous year’s students. Their furniture designs were on display for all to see in the great hall, open to criticism from anyone with an opinion, and the acid test awaits… ‘will it sell!’

With a head full of 1001 thoughts, I signed up and turned up first in the car park that Monday morning having driven the 54 miles to the School from home. By the end of the first week I realised the daily commute of 108 miles, which was taking over 2 hours, was not going to work. Isobel to the rescue! I, along with another student (Quentin), was to move in with a second student (Lee) and her partner from Monday to Friday, saving the 2 plus hours of daily travelling and allowing me to work on late most evenings.

Having come from a traditional background of a 4 year apprenticeship, where learning came through repetition, the learning environment at the School is quite different. You are given your head, encouraged to try new things, often resulting in learning through making mistakes. A great deal of discussion takes place between students and staff as well as between students themselves, igniting the thought process from which new ideas evolve into realisation (thanks for the tambal idea, Quentin!).

This course is in my opinion geared towards those who intend starting in business on completion, which is my intention. The basics of costing a job, and lists of suppliers for all things required to start and run a business is a godsend, without which much time would be spent attending business start up courses.

Giving more thought to what I said at the start I have changed my mind; I am now looking to what is still to come, not with trepidation, but with anticipation. Bring on the second half!