Plane English Down Under
By Mic Dover
Two of New Zealand's finest furniture makers actually spent much of their youth and received some of their woodworking education in Britain. Now they are extending an invitation from down under for students to attend their brand new fine woodworking school in Nelson, one of the most beautiful cities in New Zealand.
The workshop of David Haig, one of New Zealand's most accomplished woodworkers, sits on the foreshore of Cable Bay, near Nelson, at the top of the South Island. It seems appropriate that this tranquil location is David's home and workplace, since the creation that made his name is a rocking chair - the 'Signature' which has been rocking the furniture design world since 1990.
David's career in wood really began when his wife Clare became pregnant. "In the garden I found a couple of old fence posts and I got the urge to make a rocking cradle," he recalls. "Furniture maker John Shaw was visiting and identified the timber as native jarrah. He showed me how to use a wood plane, and as the grey moss came off, the shavings turned blood red and I felt this huge energy release - it was a key moment."
Now hooked on working with wood, David acquired some carpentry skills and started to learn antique furniture restoration. On a visit to the UK in the 1980s, he came across a restorer called Chris Booth in Fareham, Surrey.
"I blagged a job with Chris in this Dickensian workshop with the hide-glue bubbling away in a pot, eight apprentices and a cobblestone yard outside. I stumbled into the place when a senior worker had just left.
There was an empty bench and Booth said, "I'll give you two weeks - if you're any good I'll pay you." For David, at that time unable to afford formal training, this was a golden opportunity. "Some of those apprentices were incredible furniture restorers. Every break I would be watching them, notebook in hand. I filled my head with knowledge and my trunk with shellac, wax, old escutcheons and brassware - and took it all back home to New Zealand."
The next milestone was the visit of British designer-maker Alan Peters who had trained with such icons of the Arts and Crafts movement as Edward Barnsley. Peters ran a one-week course in Wellington that Haig attended. "Alan Peters impressed me with his insistence that furniture-making has to be a business as well as an artistic process. He showed me it was possible to do both."
Gradually losing interest in restoring the ornate Victorian styles, David began to make his own furniture, including his first attempt at a rocking chair. His chairs began to sell but he soon became dissatisfied with their design and looked to radically improve it. "For months, I sketched and sketched, drew and drew and one morning there it was -just a few lines on a piece of paper." But the tight curves of that sketched design demanded a new skill - steam bending.
"I discovered that some timbers become temporarily plasticised when heated by steam. You can bend them into new shapes that the wood retains after cooling and drying." The first chair sold quickly, then David discovered you could steam bend walnut, his favourite timber. He completed a walnut version that was again successful beyond his wildest dreams. The Signature rocking chair has since sold 150 models all around the world.
David's brother-in-law is another British-born woodworker, studio furniture maker John Shaw. (David and John married two English sisters, Clare and Fini respectively, from Whitchurch in Oxfordshire.) John is a previous winner of the Weyerhaeuser Studio Furniture Awards and his recent work includes a lectern for Nelson Cathedral and outdoor seating for an airport and a major tourist visitor centre.
John was inspired to study furniture making after discovering a book called 'A Cabinetmaker's Notebook' by renowned Swedish-American woodworker James Krenov. After graduating from Rycotewood College in Thame, John returned to New Zealand only to find that Krenov was visiting the country to hold a one-week woodworking course in Wellington. At the end of the course, Krenov presented Shaw with one his wood planes and said, "I think you should come to the US." John recalls, "I was stunned by the offer. My number one role model wanted someone to be the recipient of his immense knowledge of woodworking, and he chose me!"
Twelve months at Krenov's 'College of the Redwoods' in California took John's skills to the next level of excellence.
"Krenov taught me to be comfortable about making my work personal. It's not about a forced attempt to make your work different, it's a progression, a union between what you know and a natural ambition to grow and develop."
John spent the '90s as a tutor at a local college, but felt the course was too academic and too design focused at the expense of process.
"In recent years I think concept and idea has been promoted at the expense of craftsmanship and knowledge of the materials. Conceptual artists call people like me 'dovetail junkies', but I love teaching in a workshop situation -that banter, the atmosphere, the sounds and smells."
In 2004, David Haig asked John Shaw to tutor a woodworking class that he had organised, while he was away teaching at the US Centre for Furniture Craftsmanship, at Rockport in Maine. "Teaching in a workshop situation was a real blast," says John. "To be with people motivated and excited by the materials."
One of the students on that course, a retired Scottish soldier called Andrew Bruce, was so taken with the experience that he has migrated to New Zealand and offered to provide start-up funding for a new school. John jumped at the opportunity. "It's something I've always wanted to do. The fact that David Haig will be the other tutor is the cherry on the cake."
The school, called the Centre for Fine Woodworking, opens in November, not far from Cable Bay. Nearby Nelson is known internationally as an arts and crafts mecca, blessed with beautiful scenery, great cuisine and an extremely benign climate. The school will be based around small class sizes and a high student/tutor contact.
The school's curriculum includes short courses that cover basic and intermediate woodworking skills as well as an advanced 'Comprehensive Furniture-Making' eight month course that covers the span of key furniture making techniques and procedures in depth.
Benefactor Andrew Bruce is evangelical about the venture. "To be a world class designer and craftsman as well as a fine tutor is an extremely rare combination," he says. "To have a school with two tutors of that calibre, in a location like New Zealand, is an amazing opportunity."
Plane English Down Under
By Mic Dover
NZStories.com
Centre for Fine Woodworking
PO Box 1452
Nelson, New Zealand
e-mail: info@cfw.co.nz
phone: +64 3 545 2674
