Back to the Roots

I've had a long term concern about the lack of market for the fantastic resource of Scottish Hardwood trees, particularly the single trees that are blown down by storms or which have to be cut because of disease. There are not enough Hardwood trees in Scotland to make it viable for larger commercial sawmillers and merchants to buy timber lots. They can buy ready milled timber from abroad in larger quantities at low prices. The timber trade also likes consistency in size, grade, grain and colour so the individual logs which are often quirky shapesand sizes will either go to smaller local sawmills or, more often than not, be cut into firewood by the tree surgeon.

In recent years I have been asked by several friends and acquaintances if I would like to take away logs after they have been felled, and have started gathering them with the idea of creating furniture from these wonderful trees. Our yard is slowly filling up with some lovely logs which will be seasoned naturally over the next few years. The problem comes when the trees are in inaccessible places - at the bottom of a sloping garden or in a narrow gorge far from a road. The simple solution is the portable chainsaw mill which you can see in the photograph - it consists of the biggest chainsaw I could buy with a guide frame which allows the saw to move along the log and rip it into planks. It's a beautifully balanced machine and although it causes muscles I didn't kmow I had to glow hot, it is a pleasure to work with and it's so exciting to see the extraordinary timber reveal its glory as I make the cuts.

The tree I'm cutting here is a Cherry - I have never come accross Scottish Cherry timber before and I'm delighted to have been given one so large. I haven't counted the annual rings yet but I suspect it is over a hundred years old, growing as it did in the grounds of an imposing 18th century Manor House.

I'm so grateful to Marianne More-Gordon for offering me her trees and am buzzing with ideas for a collection of one-off pieces to make up an exhibition in a few years from now.

CIRRUS Wins Design Guild Mark

We are proud to announce that our Cirrus, our recently launched range, has been awarded a prestigious Design Guild Mark by the Worshipful Company of Furniture Makers. As both designers and manufacturers of the entire Cirrus range, we are extremely pleased with this recognition of our efforts.

The Worshipful Company of Furniture Makers is the Livery Company for the British Furniture Industry. Its purpose it to enhance and support the Industry. One way it does so is by encouraging the public recognition of British design excellence by the award of its Guild Marks to furniture assayed and found worthy by the Company’s juries.

The entire Cirrus range of tables and cabinets was deemed to have met and exceeded the exacting standards of the judging panel (which included Sebastian Conran, amongst others).

Previous winners of the Design Guild Mark have included pieces by Herman Miller and Pearson Lloyd Design - good company I think you'll agree!

Britney Folds Twelve

Alice laughed: "There's no use trying," she said; "one can't believe impossible things."

"I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen.

from Through the Looking Glass

Britney Gallivan of Pomona Valley California derived folding limits in December 2001 and folded paper in half 12 times in January of 2002, while a junior in High School.Britney this solving the Paper Folding Problem. This well known challenge was to fold paper in half more than seven or eight times, using paper of any size or shape.

The task was commonly known to be impossible. Over the years the problem has been discussed by many people, including mathematicians and has been demonstrated to be impossible.

During extensive experimentation, Britney folded a sheet of gold foil 12 times, breaking the record. This was using alternate directions of folding. But, the challenge was then redefined to fold a piece of paper. She studied the problem and was the first person to realize the basic cause for the limits. She then derived the folding limit equation for any given dimension. Limiting equations were derived for the case of folding in alternate directions and for the case of folding in a single direction using a long strip of paper. The merits of both folding approaches were explored, but for high numbers of folds, single direction folding requires less paper.

The exact limit for single direction folding case was derived, based on the accumulative limiting effects induced by every fold in the folding process.

For the single direction folding case the exact limiting equation is:

W = π t 2^3(n-1)/2

where L is the minimum possible length of the material, t is material thickness, and n is the number of folds possible in one direction.

L and t need to be expressed using the same units.

Stringent rules and definitions were defined by Britney for the folding process. One rule is: For a sheet to be considered folded n times it must be convincingly documented and independently verified that (2n) unique layers are in a straight line. Sections that do not meet these criteria are not counted as a part of the folded section.

Diagram showing part of a rotational sliding folding sequence:

In one day Britney was the first person to set the record for folding paper in half 9, 10, 11 or 12 times.

Best Protest Songs 1-3 - Robert Burns / Woody Guthrie / Bob Dylan

This a heartfelt RANT and no apologies!!!

In 1695 Scottish-born William Paterson thought up a simple but, in theory, brilliant scheme that would remedy Scotland’s worst ills. He was a prolific promoter of speculative money-making schemes, who had been partly responsible for the foundation of the Bank of England in 1694 (although he was soon branded a crook and drummed out of London by his fellow founders).

The plan was the establishment of a Scottish colony in Central America, at a place called Darien (now part of Panama), so that merchant ships no longer had to make the long and perilous journey around the Cape of Good Hope or Cape Horn. Instead, goods would be transported to the colony on the eastern site of Darien and carried across the narrow isthmus to a port on the western seaboard, where ships with exchange cargoes from the East Indies and Asia would lie waiting.

The Scots, not least because of the duplicity of the English King (a Dutchman called William of Orange!), were determined to raise all the capital alone. By August 1696 a sum of £400,000 sterling had been raised in Scotland mainly from amongst the Scottish Aristocracy. This was an enormous sum, amounting to about half the country’s available capital.The Darien scheme was a complete and disastrous failure. Around one-quarter of Scotland’s liquid assets were lost in the venture and some two thousand people died.

The failure of the Darien adventures and its devastation of the Scottish economy resulted in a payment of £398,000 (a sum known as ‘the Equivalent’) in exchange for The Treaty of Union, and the last Scottish Parliament met on 25 March 1707 - it was not to be re-established in Edinburgh until 1999, almost 300 years after the failure of Darien.

The above is a skimming of the facts and others argue whether or not the Equivalent was a bribe (or in current parlance a ‘bail-out’) or pragmatism in the face of economic meltdown. Whatever, I am convinced that the Darien adventures and the thirty years that followed hold the keys to an understanding of the psyche of modern Scotland.

What is interesting is that both the big Scottish Banks, HBoS and RBS, owe their existence to Darien and its consequences. The Bank of Scotland (now HBoS) was founded in 1695 and William Paterson soon persuaded the new Bank’s directors to back his Company of Scotland with enormous sums and without questioning the details of his venture. As a result the infant Bank descended into a crisis in its first year of life including a run on its reserves during 1696-7 and only survived following a split away by a prudent faction of its Board who refused to extend any more credit to Paterson.

30 years after Darien a new bank, to which half of the Equivalent stock was subscribed, was established in 1727 and called The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS today).

‪Did Andy Hornby, former Chief Executive of HBoS ever read "Bank of Scotland: a history, 1695-1995‬ By Richard Saville" – published by the Bank to mark its 300th Anniversary? If he did he missed the glaringly obvious lesson. Like William Paterson who did a runner from London to Edinburgh in 1696 after the English Parliament laid charges of treason against him, Hornby scarpered from Edinburgh to Nottingham to take up the post of Chief Executive of Alliance Boots, the international healthcare group – sorry my mistake – Boots is now owned by a Gibraltar company and has moved its headquarters to Switzerland!

So where do protest songs come in? Mulling over the financial muddle of the last two years I keep hearing three songs rattling around my head.

Starting with Robert Burns’ poem of 1791 deriding the members of the Scottish Parliament who signed the Act of Union with England in 1707:

We're bought and sold for English gold-

Such a parcel of rogues in a nation!

Next: Woody Guthrie’s "The Ballad of Pretty Boy Floyd." (1939) Written in the form of a Scottish ballad and including the legendary and utterly poetic line:

Some will rob you with a six-gun, and some with a fountain pen.

Joseph Geringer writes about Pretty Boy Floyd:

The legend of "Pretty Boy" Floyd had grown to such energy that hardly a day went by without one major newspaper in America running one story on him. Well-known columnist Vivian Brown was among those intrigued and sought out the man himself for an interview for the publication, Oklahoma News. As she later put it: "The papers were full of Floyd. The Depression was having its demoralizing effect upon society and many of the destitute were admiring the boy who could go out and take money from the bankers...Public temper was right for Floyd to catch the public fancy."Summarizing her interview in the article, which was published right after his death, Brown wrote: "There is much to support the picture of Floyd as a modern-day Robin Hood. Like the famed marauder of the English forests, he took money from those who had it — the banks —and divided the proceeds of his raids with the poor.

The penniless tenant farmers kept their mouths shut, they had no scruples about taking contraband wrested from bankers."

Finally - Bob Dylan, disciple of both Burns and Guthrie, wrote the topical protest ballad “Hurricane” in 1976 for Rubin "Hurricane" Carter a former middleweight who was convicted twice for the murder of three people in 1966. He was later released after serving twenty years of three life sentences due to an appeal that claimed the motive the prosecution presented during the second trial was driven by race, and therefore discriminatory. The question of Carter’s actual guilt or innocence remains an issue and in fact he lost Dylan’s support following an assault on one of his female supporters in prison. The song has no reference to bankers but the glorious image fits perfectly:

Now all the criminals in their coats and their ties 

Are free to drink martinis and watch the sun rise 

Why We Should Keep Making Things - Reason 1 - William Fife 111

William Fife III (1857-1944) was the third generation of a family of Scottish yacht designers and builders . Fife began building yachts around 1890 and soon surpassed the achievements of his father and grandfather to become known as one of the premier yacht designers of the day. Fife was a master of his trade who received commissions from European royalty and from clients as far away as Australia and designed two America's Cup yachts for grocery and tea magnate Sir Thomas Lipton who challenged for the cup a total of five times.

Éric Tabarly, the famous French sailor, noted that: "the great designers of the period were Herreshoff, George Lennox Watson, Nicholson and William Fife. Amongst these, Fife has acquired a particular reputation thanks to the sheer artistry and balance of his designs. Furthermore, those of his designs which took shape in his yard were of unmatched construction."

Wm. Fife Jr. designed over 600 yachts in an illustrious career between 1880 and 1944, building the majority of these at the family yard at Fairlie on the Clyde. For over sixty years he drew and oversaw production on what are now widely perceived as amongst the finest yachts ever created.

From vessels like Belle Aventure and Hallowe'en, the Big Class yachts such as Shamrock and Cambria, the huge schooners Altair, Cicely and Susanne; William Fife can lay claim to have designed an unparalleled portfolio of fast, beautiful and seaworthy yachts, including over 45 examples to the 8 metre rule.

The Duke of Medinacelli, a friend of King Alphonso XIII of Spain, commissioned Tuiga from William Fife to race against the king on his new 15 Metre Hispania. Built at Fairlie in 1909, the two yachts were close sister ships. Tuiga was launched on May 20th 1909, just in time for the new season.

Boats were built on the beach in Fairlie in the 1800s!

Fife yachts are amongst the most beautiful objects mankind has ever made but nothing remains of the Fife boatyard. This is a tragedy which grips me in the pit of my stomach. How could we throw away such a jewel of civilisation and become a nation who can barely make anything with shops full of cheap, badly made, imported goods without any Soul.

Today on Fairlie beach, instead of the Fife boatyard, stands an apartment block as a monument to brutalism.

Walk the Line

I think this is a great image - it was on a postcard that was sent to me some years ago. It shows women on the polishing line at Harry Lebus's Finsbury Furniture Works in Tottenham in the 1950s. I guess it was a publicity shot to show how modern the firm was - now it is redolent of so many aspects of how the furniture trade has changed in fifty years; the roles and perception of women in society and the workplace; and how health and safety has made a scene like this unthinkable (at least here in the UK).

I'm intrigued by the women's footwear - the woman second from the right looks like she has ballet pumps on or is even in bare feet. Shes also wearing a dress or skirt rather than 'Rosie the Riveter' gear. Women have obviously worked in factories and mills since the Industrial Revolution but there was a sea change during World War 2 when they took up every type of trade whilst the men went away to fight.

I remember visiting my friend Robert Morris' factory in the centre of Glasgow in the 1980s and seeing a similar scene in the polishing shop - all the workers were female.

The image also makes me reflect on the massive reduction in manufacturing in the UK which is a dangerous trend. The modern mantra that we should offshore everything that isn't at the sexy end of manufacturing is absurd - look at these numbers (which are already a couple of years out of date):

•2m graduates in China p.a. (10,000 of whom are R&D Engineers)

•60,000 Chinese students in UK p.a.

•Nokia – 2000 R&D Staff in China

•Alcatel – 2000 R&D Staff in China

•Phillips – 1000 R&D Staff in China

•All iPods are made in the Pearl River area

In the 21st century the Asian, and in particular Chinese, economies will dominate. The scale of the coming wave is much larger than that created by the USA in the 20th century.

The economic wave will flood the world with Chinese products. The global environment will be threatened as the 1.3bn population of China achieve the same per capita wealth and consume the same resources as the 200m Americans.

In the 21st century China will not be a sweatshop or screwdriver economy. The Chinese are becoming innovators and seek to build global brands. The Chinese do not recognise the same rules, in particular those realating to intellectual property.

Best Car Designs 1 - Citroen DS

Charles de Gaulle swore by them (and one saved his life); trenchcoated gendarmes and Gauloise-chewing gangsters raced romantically through the darkened streets of Paris in them; starlets from Bardot to Birkin draped themselves scandalously across them.

The Citroën DS - for Déesse, or Goddess - was unveiled at the Paris Motor Show on October 6 1955. Citroën took orders for 750 cars in the first 45 minutes, and for more than 12,000 by the end of the first day. Citroën made 1,456,115 Goddesses, the last one rolling off the production line in April 1975.

Designed by Flaminio Bertoni, an Italian-born painter and sculptor who had joined Citroën in 1932, in partnership with André Lefebvre, a French engineer who had spent most of his career to date in the aeronautics industry, the DS is still considered the perfect fusion of form and function and in 1999 a jury in London judged it the best-designed object of the 20th century.

President Charles de Gaulle adopted the car as his official means of transport and he had good cause to be grateful for his choice. On 22 August 1962, terrorists of the OAS - the Secret Army Organisation - made an attempt on the life of the French leader. They believed de Gaulle had betrayed France by yielding Algeria to the Algerian Nationalists. As dusk fell, de Gaulle's black Citroen DS was speeding down the Avenue de la Liberation in Paris at 70 mph when 12 OAS men opened fire on the car. However, because they saw the open-fire signal too late, most of their bullets hit the Citroen from behind, bursting its tyres and causing it to go into a front-wheel skid. Some shattered the rear window as chauffeur Marroux wrestled with the wheel and accelerated out of the skid, but deGaulle and his wife emerged unscathed by keeping their heads down. Thanks to its hydropneumatic suspension, the DS was able to limp safely to Villacoublay where a helicopter was waiting to take the de Gaulles to their country retreat. These events were the basis for Frederick Forsyth's book (and subsequent film starring Edward Fox) The Day of the Jackal.

Best Furniture Designs 1 - Gio Ponti Superleggera Chair

GIO PONTI (1891-1979) was a poet, painter, industrial designer, architect and founding editor of Domus magazine (later edited by Ernesto Rogers - uncle of Richard!). Through his designs and his work at Domus, he was the godfather of Italy's post-war design renaissance.

His daily routine began between 5am and 6am when he wrote thirty letters mostly to friends and collaborators telling them that he had decided to change this or that detail of a project. Ponti then left his family home for his nearby studio, a converted garage so big that, in the early days, his draftsmen rode their scooters right up to their desks, where he worked from 7am to 8pm. He sketched and wrote so frenziedly that his daughter recalled his hands being stained "black with graphite and ink" by the middle of the afternoon. Ponti then carried on working after returning home for dinner: often drawing silently after the lights had gone out, his sketches illuminated by the lights in other houses.

Inspired by the traditional Chiavari chairs Ponti had seen at the seaside, was so strong and light that a child could lift one up on a single finger, the 1957 Superleggera chair he designed for Cassina swiftly became classics of the period. I love it because of its sublety - it looks somewaht ordinary to begin with - and it's rigourous structural minimalism. It is modern yet its form and craftsmanship are are as traditional as Van Gogh's chair - four legs and a cane seat. Forsaking gimickry or self consciously avant garde forms requires great confidence in a 'modern' designer.

I am captivated by the image of the little boy - dressed like a Madison Avenue adman - the scale is contrived (i'm sure the chair is much bigger relative to the boy) but who cares.

I love Ponti for lots of reasons including his Pirelli Tower in Milan and his dedication to his Citroen DS (see later blog) - his energy and genius was such that he could produce his iconic furniture designs in his sleep while us mortals toil for years to come up with something half decent.

Thanks to Design Museum for most of the facts.

Superleggera Chair, 1957

Design: Gio Ponti

Manufacturer: Cassina

Green Shoots or Double Dip?

Like most companies, apart from pizza deliveries and stress counsellors, we have had to change our business model in recent months in response to the changing reality. Looking back to the early 1990s when we experienced the last major recession it was a couple of years before business started to return to normal. With this in mind we are planning on it being well into 2010 before Humpty Dumpty is back on the wall!

The landscape has changed and will never go back to its previous state - just like the mountains which were forced up by movements in the Earth's crust! Tectonic plates shifting. That's how it feels and it's painful to watch the accepted certainties of the market reveal themselves as fragile temporary illusions.

Our business started in 1983 and looking back through old notebooks I find many references to the 'slump' and '3 million unemployed' - at the time I had no idea what was going on having just emerged from my Art School ivory tower with my delusions in full flight. As a grown up I now know there have been 47 recessions since 1797, the longest one lasting 7 years from 1807-14. Since 1945 there have been 10 recessions taking an average of 10 months before the ecomony turned upwards. The one we're in is the longest since the Great Depression of 1929-33 which took 43 months before things started to improve.

So if things pick up next year that's great - it will have been a bad storm but nothing new on the roller coaster that is capitalism! If the previous ones are anything to go by, once things start to improve most people's memories will be erased and younger people will grow up never having consciously experienced a downturn. We'll all be back in the warm illusory bubble of growth and consumerism.

My advice is eat the pizza, do your breathing excercises and remember this is normal life and not a wake for capitalism or a dress rehearsal for the next upturn. Most important of all - place that furniture order you've been worrying about!

If you're still reading and want to know more - have a look at what the eggheads say at National Bureau of Economic Research www.nber.org

Ben's First Blog

Welcome to Ben’s Blog and welcome to our new website which I hope you like. It was designed by Redpath who I regard as Old Masters of corporate identity, branding or whatever the latest label is. Sorry about the ‘Old’ Andrew! The technology of the site is by Factonomy a Scottish software house who do big things for big organizations but happen to be next to us in sunny Musselburgh. Their black arts mean we develop the site ourselves and Neil Taylor our multi-tasking design wunderkind is taking the controls. It will take time to build the site up but in addition to showcasing our work it will become a source for information on furniture, design and materials so we hope eventually you will become regular visitors.

The old Chinese curse ‘may you live through interesting times’ rings true as the economy falls off the cliff but despite the pain our Company is going through a very positive and creative period. Business is as tough as it has ever been since we started in 1983 but we have created new designs, found new customers and partners, as well as greatly expanding our export business.

Our new Cirrus Collection has got off to a flying start on projects for firms of Actuaries, Law Firms and Accountants. I am delighted to say that my Design Team have ‘hit the spot’ in developing a product which combines the quality of materials and craftsmanship normally associated with our custom work with a system of furniture to suit the needs of contemporary flexible executive and professional workspaces.