woodworking school UK Archives - Page 2 of 2 - Chippendale School of Furniture

Chippendale graduate honoured

A young Australian furniture designer who graduated from the Chippendale school professional course in June has been shortlisted for two awards in the prestigious Young Furniture Makers Awards.

Alex Stanton has been shortlisted, first, for his Shou Sugi Ban hall table in Ash (Design Award).

The second shortlisting was for his sideboard in Rosewood and Walnut veneers (Bespoke Award).

Organised by The Furniture Makers’ Company, Alex’s pieces will be exhibited at the Young Furniture Makers exhibition in October in the City of London.

Creative designers

The event showcases the very best furniture and furnishing design talent. It offers the industry the opportunity to connect with young, creative designers.

The Young Furniture Makers Awards are the student equivalent of the Company’s Guild Marks. They recognise excellence in the fields of bespoke, design and innovation.

24-year-old Alex, from Brisbane, is currently launching his business in the UK called Alexander Stanton Fine Furniture & Design.

He personifies the fact that you don’t have to have woodworking experience to come to the Chippendale school.

Many of our students come to us as novices, having never worked with wood before.

That’s not a problem because our 30-week professional course is designed to instil in everyone the confidence and skills to practice as a fine furniture maker.

It’s a course that has been fine-tuned over thirty years. It has also seen the Chippendale school become one of the most prestigious furniture schools in the world.

Alex did have the advantage of having had three years of experience fitting timber floors and staircases.

Visit Scotland

He’s also had a long interest in designing furniture and had made simple pieces such as tables.

Before making a final decision to come to the Chippendale school, Alex came to visit a few months before the first term began.

We always welcome visitors and are delighted to show people around our workshops.

That also includes the merely curious because the school is a 3* visitor attraction with Visit Scotland.

If you’d like to visit, you can arrange a visit here, or simply contact us here.

His first project was his shortlisted hallway table and, pictured above, is Alex’s design – which he then made as a scale model.

Design skill is the first thing that we teach our professional course students. Simply, if you can’t visualise your designs, you will struggle to make anything.

But learning that skill is made easy at the school. We have expert tutors and we bring in a renowned expert from France.

Console table

Alex’s finished Ash console table had beautiful decorative flourishes. For its legs, Alex moulded laminated supports that were a design echo of Gothic cathedral architecture.

He also incorporated African Ebony veneers into the leg supports, and carried that colour contrast through to the Douglas fir drawer fronts.

He used a burning technique, called Shou Sugi Ban, which originated in 18th century Japan.

It was initially used to preserve wood. Now, it’s more commonly used to bring different colours and textures into a piece of furniture.

Alex also made a small and delicate display cabinet in Oak and spalted Beech and a steam-bent coffee table in Olive Ash and spalted Beech.

His last piece, for which he has been shortlisted, was a fluted sideboard, pictured above, in rippled Rosewood with Walnut veneers.

Alex proved himself a gifted woodworker over his year with us. We’re delighted that he has been recognised so early in his career.

Careers in sawdust

Woodworking is a passion that many people have, but don’t immediately pursue as a career.

Many of our students are people who have made the decision to leave their industry mid-career.

They’ve taken the conventional route and gone from school to university and then into a humdrum world of work.

Then, after years doing jobs that haven’t been fulfilling, they finally decide to follow their dreams.

But we’re always happy to take students on our professional course straight from school.

So, if you’re uncertain about moving onto higher education, why not consider a career in fine furniture and design?

Our 2019/20 course starts in October and we still have a couple of places remaining.

Our nine-month course is designed to turn novice woodworkers into craftsmen and women.

And we’re delighted that so many women are now enrolling on our one-week introductory course, one-month intermediate course and our flagship professional course.

Student of Year

Indeed, in the last four years, two female students have won our Student of the Year award.

Most of the school leavers that we take in are from the UK, but not this year.

Julius Schmalbach, from Hamburg in Germany, came to us with a little woodworking experience, but no formal training.

But he did have a small workshop at home, and taught himself to make simple pieces such as a table and bedside cabinet.

His first piece with us was a beautifully-designed ash chair with a woven cane back.

It had fine proportions and was exceptionally well crafted, with steam bent and laminated legs.

Underlining his professionalism, the chair was entirely his own design, which he fine-tuned from a mock-up that took four weeks to make.

It’s the first skill that students learn at the Chippendale school, because without being able to visualise your design in 3D, you can’t accurately construct your design.

However, we have the tutorial expertise to ensure that all our students easily master the dark arts of design and visualisation.

All angles

We then encourage students to make a scale model of their proposed piece.

That helps them understand what it will look like from all angles and how it will be joined together.

Most students wouldn’t have started with so ambitious a project, and Julius’ painstaking approach to his design gave him the necessary confidence.

Confidence is also something that we instil at the Chippendale school and, as the course progresses, everyone’s confidence increases.

That was certainly true of Julius because, having taken time and trouble over his chair, he then made a small bench made out of oak, which took him four days!

His signature piece was a lovely cherry veneered writing escritoire, with two drawers held together with hand-cut dovetails.

It was another ambitious project, particularly to veneer around corners, and to make its cherry octagonal tapered legs.

It’s a lovely and practical piece of furniture, with a high level of attention to detail. For example, the handles are also made from well-turned pieces of cherry.

Not content with that, he also completed a walnut medicine cabinet, with star-shaped mirror cut-outs.

The pieces of mirror are gilded in white gold to lend it a magical quality and, inside, it has two drawers and two shelves.

Julius shows that woodworking skill can be learned at any age.

So, if you think a career in furniture design and sawdust might be for you, don’t delay…contact us today!

Desk, chair and triangles

The Chippendale school welcomes students of all ages and backgrounds on our introductory, intermediate and professional courses.

But Giuseppe Merlino from near Milan is the first post-doctoral researcher in microbiology that we’ve ever had.

It underlines how fine furniture design and making can be a second career for anybody at any age.

For Giuseppe, woodworking began as a hobby while he was researching environmental microbes in Jeddah in Saudi Arabia.

But he’d also always been interested in woodworking, seeing wood as the ultimate natural and most durable of materials.

Giuseppe came to us for a visit last summer. We also put him in touch with an Italian student, Gianluca Caregnato, who studied with us during 2017/18.

His first piece on the 2018/19 course was a Bauhaus-inspired desk that beautifully combined form and function.

Sinuous curves

His writing desk, in European oak, was linear and elegant, and incorporated architectural flourishes throughout.

Most clearly, the desk top was glass, allowing every detail of its sinuous curves to be easily seen.

It therefore celebrates all aspects of the design and construction process. A Bauhaus touch is that everything is on display.

Giuseppe’s second piece was a floating-top coffee table in American oak.

The table top was veneered in triangles using different rosewood types, with the inside of each triangle veneered with heartwood – a darker colour hewn from wood where sap doesn’t flow.

The lighter shade of rosewood making up the triangles was cut from sapwood – the part of the tree where sap does flow.

The wood has a strong, sweet smell which can last for many years, and which explains the name rosewood.

Another signature piece was a chair made from European oak, held together with pegs fumed with ammonia, and incorporating steam-bent elements.

Schopenhauer

He named it after Arthur Schopenhauer, the 19th century German philosopher.

Schopenhauer is often described as the artist’s philosopher because of the inspiration his aesthetics have given to artists of all kinds.

We’re delighted that Giuseppe is staying on at the school and setting up his business, Giuseppe Merlino Furniture. He’ll now be working on-campus from our incubation spaces, Myreside Studios.

These spaces allow Chippendale graduates to create their own businesses without the hassle and expense of finding and equipping their own workshops.

Graduates in our Myreside Studios have access to all our equipment and machinery. They also have access to tutor support.

It’s a great way for our alumni to start off their new ventures, and we wish Giuseppe every success with his.

Veneers and marquetry

Last week we were privileged to have Scott Grove at the school.

Scott is a world-renowned artist and craftsman, whose work is part of, among others, the permanent collections of the Hunter Museum of American Art, and the Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester, New York.

Scott is a genuinely multi-talented artist who continues to pioneer new approaches to artistic expression and furniture design.

He has been coming to the Chippendale school for the past six years, teaching our students the intricacies of marquetry and veneering.

In the course of the week Scott touched on over thirty different techniques, including, marquetry, parquetry, radial cuts, curved forms, compound veneering, and all sorts of inlay materials from silver filigree, brass, paua shell and mother-of-pearl and more.

“I try to expose the students to as many techniques as possible, recognising that not every technique is for everyone,” he says.

“I love to see the wide range of diversity of students at the Chippendale school. They come from all over the world and bring a broad spectrum of aesthetic background, and then they take what I show them and run with it, coming up with some very creative solutions.”

Last year, student Nick Smith entirely veneered his Kawasaki Ninja 600cc superbike, a project which turned it into a work of art – and which won him the 2017 Richard Demarco Prize for creative design.

Nick’s signature project saw him 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.

Scott is also the author of a number of books including his most recent, Advanced Veneering and Alternative Techniques. He also writes for a variety of national publications and is a YouTube personality.

More information can be found IMAGINEGROVE.

Exhibitions and Open Days

Each year, the Chippendale International School of Furniture welcomes students from around the world to our immersive 30-week course.

The quality of furniture that the students make is always amazing, and at the end of each year their work can be enjoyed by members of the public at an Edinburgh exhibition and Open Days at the school.

This year, the Chippendale school’s Edinburgh exhibition is being held in Greyfriars Kirk (1 Greyfriars, EH1 2QQ) on Monday 12^th ( 1pm – 8pm) and Tuesday 13^th of June (10am – 8pm).

This is being followed by an Open Evening (6-8pm) at the Chippendale school (Myreside Grange, East Lothian EH41 4JA) on Friday 16^th June and Open Day (10am – 6pm) on Saturday 17^th June. Everybody welcome!

This year we’re also honoured to have the work of five students exhibited at the Scottish parliament between 26th and 30th June.

The Art of Windsor Chair Making

The third and final term of our students’ nine-month furniture design course was kick-started with a week of intensive woodworking, learning the art of Windsor chair making under the guidance of Britain’s leading Windsor chair makers, Tom Thackray and his son-in-law Steve.

The making of Windsor chairs involves a whole range of woodworking skills that, once learnt, will be invaluable to our students in their furniture-making careers. First, the seats are shaped using a ‘travisher’ and various degrees of sanding.

The rods at the back of a Windsor chair are known as ‘sticks’ – as opposed to spindles – and are shaped from thick to thin by forcing them through a specialist lathe.

Traditional woodturning skills are used to form and shape the legs.

A Windsor chair is a joy to behold and a pleasure to own. They are chairs that become loved over time and passed down from generation to generation. They make wonderful gifts and, because they can be handcrafted in any size, they can be made for men, women and children – and they can even be built as rocking chairs. Additionally, a whole wealth of design features can be added, including the carving of personal details into the ash wood, making each chair absolutely unique.