I’ve been bending bars together with inmates working in the metal workshop at The Institution at Herstedvester in Copenhagen. Exploring what gives meaning to the maker. Trying to work out a production process that involves bending metal bars free of tooling, but instead using the body as a tool. This has developed into some kind of ‘Aligned Production’ method, it becomes a flowing movement, like a daily Thai Chi exercise.

Left hand over right, neck, neck, elbow, right knee, left calf. The aim is a flowing movement where the work is not put down. So far it works to some extent, We have been trying to repeat the movements to see if the results are consistent, but it takes some amount of focus by the maker. High dive, treble flip back, off a springboard type focus. But I’m told that this is a positive experience.

It is this positive experience for the maker that is in focus, it comes first. From this a flowing body movement can be developed. Functional items can be developed later, eventually.

However we did start the exploration with a functional product in mind, just in case it was necessary. But it soon got put to one side. My plan now is to take up Thai Chi and high diving before going too much further into the functional product. First I need to find out just how positive an experience it is, hitting water at the wrong angle again and again from a height.

The ‘Untitled Bent Bars’ are part of the SE 2012 Exhibition with the theme Sculptural Furniture. This was the starting point for the project. Wanting to take the focus away from the showroom desirability of the end furniture piece, with people questioning if they would buy it or not. Instead I’m asking if the initial act of making gives any meaning and if  one really wants to buy that?

I am exhibiting ‘Untitled Bent Bars’ (quite literally) at this years SE exhibition in Copenhagen. The exhibition theme is Sculptural Furniture.

SE exhibition text reads:

This year, The Cabinetmakers’ Autumn Exhibition has moved indoors to present 41 sculptural furniture pieces in the company of Bertel Thorvaldsen’s works at Thorvaldsens Museum. The stunning rooms, colour scheme and unique interior of the museum form the setting for the three-dimensional furniture sculptures which are the answer to this year’s challenge: creating a sculptural furniture piece in the natural colour of the material measuring 1 x 1 x 1 m.

Opening of The Cabinetmakers’ Autumn Exhibition 2012 – Sculptural furniture with speeches by Museum Director Stig Miss and Chairman of The Cabinetmakers’ Autumn Exhibition Mia Gammelgaard

1 November 2012 at 17:30 – 19:30 incl. a Roman buffet , Thorvaldsens Museum, 2 Bertel Thorvaldsens Plads, Copenhagen K.

Come meet, see and touch this year’s sculptural furniture experiments in a dialogue between past and future, created in a dynamic partnership between some of Denmark’s best designers and manufacturers.

The Cabinetmakers’ Autumn Exhibition is under the patronage of HRH Crown Prince Frederik

We thank the following foundations and sponsors, which have co-funded the exhibition:

Augustinus Fonden / Danmarks Nationalbank’s Anniversary Foundation of 1968 / Den A.P. Møllerske Støttefond / Grosserer L.F. Foghts Fond / Gurli og Paul Madsens Fond / Margot og Thorvald Dreyers Fond / Oticon Fonden / Toyota-Fonden / Træets Uddannelses- og Udviklingsfond / Træfonden / Danish Art Workshops

The printable version of the original JW001 milk carton version is now layed out and ready to download as an craft ebook. Available at www.DesignYouMake.com

A wall display for small treasure. A modern day version of the old recycled Type Case drawers that people hang on their walls and keep small memories in. The craft ebook presents the inspiration, technique, simple making step by step guide and the all important printable templates for making the JW002  printable wall display in two sizes.

The templates can be printed on various types of paper, old and new.

INVITATION

THE MUSEUM OF COPENHAGEN, VESTERBROGADE 59.

My Dialogue stools will be finding a home amongst the trash at The Museum of Copenhagen’s exhibitionabout trash in the city. On the night of the opening, coinciding with Copenhagen Culture Night, I shall be running a Neo Tramp Art making workshop. Here my milk carton wall displays will be on show and people passing through the museum will be able to cut up milk cartons and contribute to a new wall display. Plus make their own mini wall displays using left over brochures that have been collecting dust in the museum store rooms.

Washing of milk cartons collected from the coffee shops around Enghave Plads in Copenhagen; Kaffeplantagen, kaffeslabberasen and The One With No Name. Along with some much appreciated help from the Business Creatives from KEA D&B.

Nearly finished

Cutting of earlier Water Drop from 2007. I forgot how long it took.

Information from The Museum of Copenhagen. http://www.copenhagen.dk/en/

Mayors Pia Allerslev, Culture and Leisure Administration and Ayfer Baykal, Technical and Environmental Administration, will open the exhibition. Musician Martin Ullits Dahl will perform a work composed especially for the occasion: An interaction of real sounds recorded at rubbish dumps and incineration plants. As a part of the performance children of all ages are invited to create music on home made instruments made from trash. There will be served “studenterbrød”, rubbish dump sweets, snacks, organic juice and beer.

Trash is integral to city life. We live daily with and alongside rubbish. We reuse and recycle, we throw away and scrap. TRASH! is an exhibition for children and adults on how Copenhagen throughout  the ages has treated it’s rubbish and waste. Take a dive with a dumpster into the depths of a supermarket rubbish bin, hear city teenagers speak of their own consumption, tell us your own throw away stories and meet the dust man on his early morning route through Copenhagen.

Enter a universe of city rubbish, dump stories and trashed building materials.

SE is coming of age – 30 rich and eventful summers have gone by, and that calls for celebration!

For this years SE Autumn Exhibition 2011 the theme is giving a gift,Gifting, as it is SE’s 30 year anniversary. From this theme I have worked on the community action of giving a goat instead of a gift. I have asked myself what could be the furniture equivalent of donating a goat to a third party. I have worked with Københavns MøbelSnedkeri and the result is ‘A Goat of a Gift’, consisting of Goat as well as a Kid offspring. This Goat and Kid can be seen at Designmuseum Danmark, 68 Bredgade in Copenhagen.

Dates / 13-30 October 2011. Hours / Tuesday through Sunday 11 – 17 / Mondays closed

Shaving Goat, based on the traditional Folk Art Shaving Horse tool. (Cut by CNC, hand finished by whittling knife)

Kid goat offspring, home spun from the Shaving Goat.

Process starts with a walk in the woods. Slowly collecting sticks. If I’m thinking this could be done as a weekend break, it will require a couple of weekends.

Making process, some whittling and knotting.

Early testing of the weaving process. If a seven year old can, we all can.

Small scale testing of the theory.

FOLLOWING TEXT FROM SE ABOUT THE OPENING AND EXHIBITION..

The party is held in a tent, so please bring a warm sweater.

The SE members have been asked to bring a gift of a piece of furniture. It’ll be fun to see what they have come up with. I know that there is going to be a goat, a flying carpet and other exciting things, so do come and join us in celebrating the new furniture, the love of the craft, the cooperation, the association and the community.

Happy birthday greetings

SE – the Cabinetmakers’ Autumn Exhibition

The Cabinetmakers’ Autumn Exhibition is under the protection of HRH Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark

I have heard about an old rural principal, how farmers always came home with a stone in hand. In this way, over time, their field is cleared of one more stone while providing one more stone for building.
Over a period of a few weeks, I picked up discarded chairs while on my way home, slowly collecting the many legs that I needed.

The chair was originally for an exhibition, for which I had deadlines. As time ran out, I got on my bike and went and collected up the remaining legs. This was the last trip I made on this particular bike, as it went missing later that same day and since then, I have not come home with any more legs for building.

Photos showing the lamps of ’Billiedskolen i Tvillinghallen Wednesday 5 o’clock class’. and Fantasy Design conference. 2011

After the commissioned Diamond Lamp for ‘Billiedskolen’ and the ‘Wednesday 5 o’clock Class’ making their own lamps, their work caught the attention of ’Fantasy Design in community’ resulting in an invite to talk at the Fantasy Design Conference on design Education – ‘Involving Children and young people in designing the future’. Held in an old monastery in Gent, Belgium. I was asked to talk about the theme ’Design for all’ so I spoke about my desirers to be Robyn Hood.

Link to Billiedskol i Tvillinghallen

Link to Fantasy Design in Community

SE release: ‘For the first time ever, the Cabinetmakers` Autumn Exhibition (SE) is taking an entire exhibition abroad to show its special take on Danish furniture design. Tokyo Design Centre will provide the perfect framework for Whiteout, SE`s latest exhibition consisting of 38 new chairs centering on a white colour theme’.

‘Billedskolen i Tvillingehallen’ commissioned the making of a Diamond Shade for their meeting room.  I based the lamp on traditional landscape painting,  (rectangle landscape, green at the bottom, moody sky at the top). Besides coloured paper I used old books about planes, so parts of planes now fly through the sky. In referance to the history of Tvillingehallen, the building was once a slaughterhouse, I found an appropriate book and used it to make the sky a little overcast and to dot the landscape with cattle.

The Art School is for children and young adults who come into the school on different days of the week. I set up the Silent Circus in the entrance and slowly made the lamp, spread over a week, so all  the students got to see the lamp in progress. I then had to take it home to finish it, these things are not quick to make, plus the children kept interrupting me.

Besides me making a lamp for the school, I also introduced the JW006 E-craftbook to the Wednesday 5 o’clock class, who all made their-own Diamond Shade lamps over the following couple of Wednesdays. I’ll post the results of that separately.

Almost forgot, this lamp can be downloaded as an craft e-book, So you can make your own.

http://www.designyoumake.com

Made with Corian, Wool, Old Woollen Jumpers, Pride & Passion. As part the SE 2010 WHITE OUT exhibition.

I’ll cover the longer story behind the chair below, the most important thing about the project for me, was asking if the pride and passion of the local needle felting artisan can be utilised in the process of furniture making? Can local hobby artists be utilised by larger industry? The result of the project is a time consuming Zen like process of drilling holes and then pulling loops of wool through them, followed by the freedom to sculpt wool.

The longer story.

It may need explaining that the original title of the SE exhibition, when the brief first came out, was DANISH NOW – WHITE OUT. For graphic simplicity the exhibition title was cropped to WHITE OUT.

The overall form of the ‘We Love Freedom’ chair is a combination of perfect milking stool and honest big beautiful butt. This was some deeper elaborated personal reflection about my own view of Scandinavia. After 14+ years I am pretty much resigned to being DANISH NOW.

The milking stool reflects my original, probably naive, typecast and limited image of Scandinavia, based on beautiful milkmaids, perfection, naturists and an energetic freedom of running through long grass. (I’ve since learnt Denmark is not part of Switzerland and milk stools are in fact much lower to the ground, to enable one to get under the cow and milk it).

The felted arse part of the stool is a reflection of knowing better. The exhibition WHITEOUT rules, (under the guise of being a theme), lead me to thinking along the lines of ‘the Danes relaxed attitude to exposing their white bits’.

So that all make sense now, yes?

oh well.

The looping process involves taking pleasure in drilling holes. A loop of wool is pulled through the hole; this is enough to keep it in place. Anyone is welcome to use the Looping technique as a folk art technique. One day I’ll get around to illustrating Looping as a folk art technique, but until then, get in touch and I will be happy to talk you through some tips. I have some projects in mind.

It is a simple, yet time consuming pleasure. I like to think that the process could be passed on from generation to generation with each generation felting their old woollen jumpers into the chair. It is basically a simple upholstery process that anyone can quite easily and affordably get involved with.

For more practical use, the looping process is better reversed, so the loops are on the outside and the layered area, that can be replenished and patched, is used to sit on as padding.

I was lucky, in that it turned out that Københavns Møbelsnedkeri had contacts in their families that are fans of needle felting, not only on their door step, but living with them. So they put us in touch with Mai-Britt Eschen. She had never done anything quite as big as this before, but we got some advice from Denmark’s professional needle felt artisans and we worked things out.

The brief for the Butt was to make a big beautiful butt, it is meant to be a well formed arse that is scaled up a little. Like a big stone sculptural arse. We could have used a slightly cheaper wool in building up the form, had we know at the time. We did however use old jumpers to help build up the form. Plus we used the old jumpers and some black wool to give the Butt a slight texture. It is also soaped, which all helps to prevent it from looking like a big teddy bear butt.

For developing commercial designs involving free forming and felt looping please also get in touch. Even better if it will utilise local passion and improve the enjoyment of furniture production.