The Technique of FURNITURE MAKING

Preface to the revised edition

It was with some trepidation that I accepted the task of revising Ernest Joyce's work, for in the eyes of so many it had become the wood­worker's bible, helping countless people in their search for woodworking knowledge and their own personal search for excellence. This reluctance to tamper with the bible, which was strong, and shared by many other people, was tempered by the knowledge that much had changed in the world of craft furniture since 1970 when this work was first published— changes that Ernest Joyce himself would well have approved. Writing as he did in the late sixties, he could never have envisaged the tremendous boom that was to take place in the crafts, nor how this was to spread so rapidly around the world. In particular, the craft of furniture making as practised in small work­shops is now more healthy, relevant and exciting than at any time since the turn of the century.

We no longer have to apologize for working in wood, for using hand skills and traditional joints, nor for stressing quality and individuality or any of the other qualities of the individual craftsman. These are now so widely recognized that I have purposely shifted the emphasis in this book even further towards the self­employed craftsman and away from industry, not from any feeling of antipathy to the latter, but simply because, just as the craftsman has moved on these past fifteen years, so too has the furniture industry. Streamlined and increasing­ly international, so much of its technology and marketing techniques is far removed from the message this book has to give and Joyce himself was so anxious to impart.

If much has changed in regard to the status of the craftsman and the role of industry, many other things have not. Many of the skills and techniques practised in workshops today vary little from those of centuries ago. The hand tools we use daily differ little from those of 15 or even 150 years ago. What has changed.

however, is the choice available. From the humblest hand tool to the most powerful woodworking machine, we are now no longer restricted to what is made in our own country but have a wide choice from all over the world. Also, because power tools were relatively new fifteen years ago, it is natural that the biggest advance in choice and technical development should have been in this area, and consequently this section of the book has been expanded.

It would be impossible to revise this book without getting involved in the question of furniture design, for here, too. thinking has changed. It was inevitable that fashions would change since 1970, and no craftsman can afford to ignore fashion, whether he wishes to follow its dictates or not. But more important than the changes in fashion has been the emergence of such strong influences as the American school of craft furniture making, led by such inter­national figures as Wendell Castle and James Krenov, and magazines, such as Fine Woodworking in the United States; the rise, too. of the Crafts Council in Britain, and the influence of such household names as John Makepeace. Habitat and MFI; and lately in Europe, as a climax to a decade of Italian domination of the industrial and contract furniture scene, the impact of Memphis design.

All these influences have combined to throw wider open than ever before that thorny question—what is good design? In 1970 it was somewhat easier to answer that in Britain. People tended to look to the Council of Industrial Design and its London Design Centre to give us the answer. But the public was becoming bored with acres of clinical, flush veneered doors and surfaces, and craftsmen too began to question the relevance of industrial design to their own work, where they were using low scale technology and designing not for a mass market with all the restrictions imposed by the production line, but for individuals and for themselves.

Thus there has been a reaction against the anonymity of much of the industrial furniture of the early 1970s, and a greater emphasis on individual creative work amongst craftsmen, and, more generally, a wider use of colour and decoration in the furniture in our shops.

The result in 1987 is that furniture design is very much in the melting pot. Some worthless gimmickry is thrown up side by side with much that excites and stimulates, and there is a sense of expectancy in the craft field that makes furniture making no longer one of our weaker surviving crafts, but one of the strongest and most vibrant.

Alan Peters 1987