furniture and objectsI’ve always been interested in the idea of making things. I spent a lot of time in the woodworking rooms at high school. When I was fencing and contracting we used to bring home fence posts on the truck and make our own kind of bush furniture, sometimes chainsawing them out right in the house. (It wasn’t much of a house). From these utilitarian beginnings I went on to learn how to build traditional wooden boats using techniques that find their origins in Viking times. Later again I studied fine woodworking and furniture making, first at Martina Rienzner workshops and then at Sturt School for Wood. While I was at Sturt I started playing around with metal so that I could make my own furniture hardware – hinges, latches and handles. That exploration took on a life of its own and took me on to learn fine metalworking techniques at the Enmore Design Centre. Many of these techniques have a meditative quality. The design process becomes partially intuitive as you feel your way through the development of the object. The metal tells you a lot, you have to listen to it as well as watch it. |
