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The value and cost of furniture making

Anselm Fraser, principal, the Chippendale school’s principal, writes in The Woodworker magazine.

Oscar Wilde, the 19^th century playwright, expressed it perfectly.

In his play, Lady Windermere’s Fan, he wrote that a cynic is “a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.”

Like much of Oscar Wilde’s work, his comedy hides a biting truth. We often consider moral or ethical values as being less important than financial worth. We allow greed to overrule good sense.

It’s an issue that is particularly pertinent for today’s woodworkers. Because the value that we place on a beautifully-crafted piece of furniture may be rather more than a prospective customer is prepared to pay for it.

Yes, it may have taken many, many hours to make, using the finest woods, veneers and delicate inlays. But if that prospective customer is looking for a simple table or chest of drawers, then he or she may be more interested in utility value than financial value.

In other words, spending days and weeks crafting the finest chest of drawers in the whole history of chests of drawers, and placing a huge price tag on it, is no guarantee of a sale.

Sensible price

In a world dominated by IKEA, furniture makers have to look imaginatively at the market, design and build accordingly. Most importantly, always have a sensible price in mind. We may be craftsmen and women, but our valuations have to be pragmatic.

The key concept is value. The painting hanging on our wall may only have aesthetic value, until we discover it’s a Picasso. At that point it acquires huge utility value as a way of paying off the mortgage.

In the same way, good furniture has both utility and aesthetic value. Our wonderful chest of drawers may be aesthetically beautiful but, if the drawers don’t open properly, it lacks utility value.

That balance between form and function is at the heart of all good design, from architecture to fine woodworking. Finding that balance is the first thing that furniture designers should always do. Who am I selling to, and what are the values my customer is looking for?

The fact is, good design must be about both the aesthetic and the utilitarian. If necessary, woodworkers shouldn’t be afraid to compromise, if compromise brings down the cost to an acceptable level.

That budget will be influenced by two things – the cost of materials and the labour costs of designing and making the piece of furniture. It’s a deceptively simple bit of arithmetic: costs + your time = price.

Of course, it’s a little bit more complicated. Costs aren’t just wood and screws. They also include everything from heating to water, local taxes to equipment.

Expectations

It’s a process of determining cost and then building in a reasonable profit margin.

Make something for £10,000 and sell it for £11,800, and your gross profit is £1,800. You will also go out of business rather rapidly.

As a rule, gross margins after direct costs should be in the region of 40-50%.

Generally, improving profit margin should always be a clear and unambiguous business objective. But, equally, you must have realistic expectations about what customers may be prepared to pay.

The problem is that many woodworkers think too highly of themselves. They charge a Rolls-Royce rate, when their customer is looking for a Fiat Uno. (All too infrequently, alas, the opposite can be true!)

Also remember that Pablo Picasso only survived during his early career in Paris by burning most of his paintings to keep warm.

I always advise our students to be pragmatic, certainly until they have built a reputation. There’s no point in graduating from a furniture school and thinking you are immediately a master of the woodworking universe.

That takes time and, in the meantime, it’s better to under-sell rather than not sell. Remember also another line from Lady Windermere’s Fan: “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”

Start low, be sensible and pragmatic, but always aim higher and higher.

Note: A couple of places remain on our professional nine-month course which begins in October. For more information, click here.

Fumed and golden mirror

Many students come to the Chippendale school having had previous careers in something else entirely.

Campbell Paterson from Grantown on Spey in the Scottish Highlands was no exception.

His early career was working offshore in the oil and gas sector. Then he spent another three years in landscape gardening and tree surgery.

He therefore had a basic understanding of the raw material that goes into fine furniture.

Although learning professional woodworking had been in his mind for several years, he had little woodworking experience.

The only training he’d received was in spoon carving, and that only gives limited skills.

Advanced skills

But lack of woodworking skills or experience is no impediment to coming on one of our professional courses.

Because, over a nine-period, we first teach our students the basics of design and making. Then we give them all the advanced skills they will ever need to practice as professional furniture designers.

It’s a course that we’ve been running for over thirty years. So we know everything about how to build our students’ confidence alongside their design and making skills.

But our professional course is also about working with students of all ages and proficiencies. So it’s a course that suits everyone, whether or not they have ever picked up a chisel.

Campbell’s long-term goal is to return to the Highlands and set up his own woodworking business.

But, for the immediate future, he’s basing his new business in incubation space at the school.

Myreside Studios

Our incubation space, Myreside Studios, allows graduate students to easily set up in business. They have continued use of the school’s equipment and machinery.

It also gives them access to our tutors so that, if they have a design or making problem, help is on hand.

One of Campbell’s most beautiful pieces was his mirror, a decorative item that all our students have to make.

It’s a segment of the course that coincides with us bringing in a world-renowned gilding expert to teach them that important skill.

Many of our students therefore use their new gilding skills to decorate their mirrors, and Campbell was no exception.

His stunning mirror in white and yellow gold, framed in fumed Oak, was a thing of exceptional beauty.

Drinks cabinet

Gilded with 12 carat white gold and 24 carat yellow gold, it was artificially weathered to give it an antique look.

His other wonderful piece was a drinks cabinet for displaying one bottle only.

It was therefore a cabinet to showcase only your finest and oldest bottle of whisky.

Made from fumed Oak, with Sycamore veneer on the outside, it had flamed Mahogany veneer on the inside.

The cabinet opened vertically with a three-leaf hinged door, and inside was an oak stand with solid brass surround for that special bottle.

Campbell’s new business is Campbell Paterson Furniture.

Stribh to overcome

Some students come to us straight from school, but many leave it a few years before enrolling at the Chippendale school.

Many feel pressured to go into higher education and then into a job that they find unfulfilling.

That’s when it becomes a choice between the conventional or following their dreams.

We believe at the Chippendale school that you’re never too old, or too young, to choose fine furniture design and making.

One far-flung student on our 2018/19 professional course was Kent Turner, from Washington State in the USA.

He had been looking to make a career change into fine furniture design and making for several years.

Seattle

But for Kent, then working as a builder on an island north of Seattle, a decision finally had to be made.

He therefore came to us knowing something about working with wood, having been building timber frame houses.

But that doesn’t mean that we only take students with prior knowledge of woodworking.

In our experience, some of our best students are those who are complete novices.

What’s important is that students come to us with a thirst for knowledge and the acquisition of skills.

Our nine-month professional course is intensive and we expect students to work hard.

That’s exactly what Kent did, and proved himself to also have very real design and making skills.

Signature

For us, his signature pieces were a pair of funky and quirky chairs.

But, take away the quirkiness and they are also very comfortable.

That balance between form and function is very important in furniture design.

Because it’s all very well designing something with a visual WOW factor, but if it doesn’t perform well it’s a design fail.

Kent called his chairs ‘Stribh and ceannsaich’ which is Scottish Gaelic for ‘struggle and overcome.’

It’s what Kent had to do, in learning his new trade and making his design ideas work.

His chairs were designed around ease of disassembly, held together by Japanese joinery, dowels and wedges.

Sculpted

The feet of Kent’s chairs were made from yew, and the seats and backs from sycamore, with walnut accents.

Those accents were sculpted into one of chairs, where one side of it appeared to be splitting away.

It was a natural fault in the wood and Kent’s solution was to ‘stitch’ the chair back together with walnut strips.

The clever design flourish was to place the walnut strips on different places on each side of the chair, giving the impression of crude sewing.

Kent wanted to put a little of Scotland into his chairs, hence the stribh and ceannsaich name.

But it’s also a reflection of the sheer hard work that went into their creation.

For example, sanding the feet alone took six-and-a-half hours of toil.

However, Kent struggled and eventually overcame.

We wish him every success in his new career.

Cocktails and 007

Heather Jones from Los Angeles came on our professional course with some furniture design experience, but no woodworking skills.

She was previously an art director and graphic designer, and one of her hobbies was designing furniture.

She decided that it was time to acquire the necessary skills to turn her visual designs into completed realities.

Heather’s past career, which included work as a set and production designer in Hollywood, had given her real expertise in visual design.

That’s the first thing that all our professional course students learn because you can’t make fine furniture without a clear design and, therefore, precise dimensions.

In that respect, Heather had a head start on some of our other students.

Her signature piece was her Gertrude’s Cabinet of Cocktail Curiosities. It demonstrated that, over the year, she certainly did add woodworking skills to design expertise.

It was a monumental piece of furniture made from stained sycamore, with hand-turned legs and carved doors.

Gin

Inside, it had two drawers ideal, so Heather said, “for love poems scribbled on napkins while sipping (too much) gin.”

The playful nature of her pieces is also evident in her Double “Oh James Darling, Get me a Cocktail” Table.

It was a lovely piece of work, with a Sapele veneer radial table top, fluted base and brass accent.

But it was her marketing acumen that earned Heather this year’s Marketing Award.

It may seem strange for a furniture school to have an annual marketing award, but it’s something we believe passionately in.

Our professional course teaches the basics of business planning, website design and marketing. We also expect students to design and make their own marketing materials.

That holistic approach to the Chippendale’s course gives our graduates the best-possible start to their new careers.

Heather’s beautifully-designed brochure for her cabinet and table was fun, creative and eye-catching.

In other words, it demonstrated clearly that she understood the importance of marketing to business success.

Heather will be returning to the USA to set up Heather Jones Bespoke Furniture.

Christmas at Chippendale

An immersive course at the Chippendale school involves a great deal of hard work…for most of the time.

But we also like to mix hard work with fun because what we learn with pleasure we never forget.

For example, being an international school, we celebrate the various festivals and national days that are commemorated in each of our students’ own countries.

We not only like to make everyone feel welcome, we use these occasions to learn more about each other’s cultures.

But one festival we can all celebrate is Christmas and every year staff and students come together in the school for a turkey-and-all-the-trimmings lunch.

It’s also fitting that, in training to be woodworkers, we are also remembering the son of a carpenter.

And, as trained or trainee carpenters, we can also remember Saint Joseph, Jesus’ father, the patron saint of cabinetmakers.

Superbike to “work of art” wins Forfar man Demarco Prize

A Forfar man who graduated last week from Scotland’s only furniture design school has won the prestigious Richard Demarco Design Prize.

Nick Smith (32) has transformed his Kawasaki Ninja 600cc motorbike into a “work of art,” according to Professor Richard Demarco CBE, Scotland’s leading arts commentator.

Nick is now creating Strathmore Restore from a new workshop in Forfar, and will be specialising in furniture restoration, kitchen design and creating bespoke furniture.

Nick’s project during his year at the Chippendale International School of Furniture was to painstakingly create intricate burr ash veneers with walnut accents to replace the bike’s original plastic fairings.

He also gilded the windscreen and wing mirrors and, to create the final “wow” factor, highlighted parts of the new veneered fairings with 23.5 carat gold.

The Chippendale school in East Lothian takes students from around the world for its immersive furniture design courses. This year, students came from the UK, USA, Germany, Austria, Poland, India, Singapore, South Korea and Australia.

“Nick’s achievement has been to take something mass-produced and, with artistic talent and infinite skill, recreate it as a unique work of art,” said Professor Demarco.

Nick, who is originally from Montrose, will be splitting his time between life as a woodworker and his other entrepreneurial venture, Strathmore Brewery – a new Forfar artisan brewery that has just started supplying a range of ales that it says “reflect the heritage and soul of Scotland.”

He is a graduate of Robert Gordon University where he studied robotics, and who then worked as a control and automation specialist on large-scale computer systems.

Nick said that “Winning the award is an unexpected dream come true. Combining my new found passion working with wood, with a long standing passion for motorcycles was lot of work but a lot of fun too.”

Anselm Fraser, principal of the Chippendale school, said that “the delicate skills involved in bespoke furniture design and making can be applied in different ways, and Nick has demonstrated real skill and talent in turning something manufactured into an utterly original thing of beauty.”