donald fortescue

Making is an act of remembering, of remaking the world again and again. Initially, there's the immediate remembering of "where's the tape measure?", "what's the next step in a particular process?", "how does something 'real' look compared with my remembered concept of it?". Then there's the remembering of past mistakes and successes; the learning and training that modulates every decision and action. Some of this knowledge can be considered as memorised information; how to prepare veneers, service a machine, where to buy glue,etc. But, for a maker of objects, a great deal is in the body as well as the mind. The knowledge of how to hold a tool, the feeling for true horizontal and vertical when drilling or planing, the sound of a sharp blade cutting well, the feel of a careful detail, the qualities of a finished surface are 'memorised' by the body rather than the 'mind'; these learned processes and perceptions amount to what is generally considered as 'skill' or 'craftsmanship'. The conscious mode of memory also includes the history of what we do, knowledge of the work that has gone on before in one's medium, the rational analysis of design, function, medium and technique. The placement of one's own contribution within the wider community of practice. Finally, there are the memories of a life lived within the mesh of the real world. The world of sharp edges, soft touches, the smell of ground nutmeg and freshly sawn floorboards, salt on the skin, slabs of red hot steel squashed by massive steaming rollers, the hiss of Casuarinas in the breeze, the indigo of the deep end of a swimming pool in early evening, the burn from a soldering iron I wasn't supposed to touch. Everyone has a rich 'association matrix' of experiences, sensations and memories which informs their appreciation of and reaction to the environment around them. Makers draw on this constantly; it is the well-spring of the 'poetry' of making. The following are windows on parts of my life which are particularly rich in these associations. They somehow constantly inform my making - 'I don't know how' or maybe 'I don't remember, yet.'

EARLY PROGRAMMING

'Grandpa Pump Pump'.

My grandparent's house at Budgewoi was certainly a mixed bag of tricks. It was an exotic location for me, full of things that were beyond my experience and understanding. On an emotional level it was torture. Our regular monthly visit was accompanied by a barely suppressed undercurrent of unpleasant familial emotions. It was a generally accepted axiom that my grandmother was an evil, manipulating bitch despite her outward warmth and apparent Christian principles. The fact that she lived both with her husband and her best friend in the same house was unthinkingly accepted by us children (as was everything in the adult world) but was in retrospect a strange situation which resulted in a complex tangle of adult emotions around us. Seeing contemporary photos of their dining room still brings on a feeling of nausea. I can hear the quiet ticking of the mantelpiece clock over the strained silences and taste the fizz of my carefully sipped lemonade. Inside, my grandmother ruled by quiet manipulation and an indomitable will to control. I can only remember my grandfather being inside to eat (my grandmother was renowned for her cooking, the cakes she made for special occasions were one of the mainstays of her public standing - strange that when my father remarried after my mother's death it should be to a prize-winning pastry chef) and to watch the midday wrestling on TV. Food and fighting seemed to be at the core of my grandparents domesticity. Outside, it was a different matter. Outside was my grandfathers domain. Outside, everything was ordered and practical with nothing hidden; at least as far as the border fence. On the lake was my grandfather's clinker-built diesel 'putt-putt' boat, 'Dauntless' (aptly named as the fortress of his solitude). Fishing was his passion and in his 90's his reason for living. My grandfather and father taught me how to make rangoon beach fishing rods, selecting the bamboo, lacing on the line guides, fitting and maintaining the reel, tying the various knots required to attach the immaculately sculpted little hooks, swivels and assortment of sinkers made through the alchemy of molten lead poured into wooden moulds. Strangely, I can't recall actually fishing! Outside was also our domain, our escape from the family cloisters. In the orchard and beyond the boundaries down by the shores of the lake we were free. Free to hunt for tree frogs hiding on the walls and behind the Reader's Digests (you would never think that 'Laughter was the Best Medicine' would have a place in that household) in the outside chemical toilet with the familiar 'clank..clank..clank' of the ratchet rotated pan. Free to pump the hand pump atop the giant rainwater storage tank which fed the gravity feed reservoir tank on its stand high above the kitchen (hence my grandfather's nickname). Beyond the boundary, there was a mowed patch for 10 feet and then the forest began. A wood of low growing casuarinas that whistled in the constant breeze, laden with the scent of the rotting mounds of sea grass washed up from the lake and tangled around the bases of the outermost trees.

'O-pip''

"Set in a bracelet of green hills Down by the sea's silver surge"

Down by the sea's silver surge at Stanwell Park it was all 'outside'. The tiny fibro shacks hugging the sliding dirt of the cliffs seemed to brace themselves. In fear of being blown away by a southerly or shoved into the ocean by the looming escarpment. The forests pushed down from the moist overhangs and reached down to the shore to be driven back by the salt winds and by the fires that raged every summer and set us in a ring of dancing flame and smoke. It was impossible to ignore the outside. It was sand from the beach tramped through the house, the sun relentlessly bleaching the furnishings and burning us to blisters season after season, the salt rime encrusting the house, and the wind. The constant breeze even on the hottest days, the bright nor'easter dragging in the blue bottles, and the southerlies; the winds that whipped my father into a frenzy. We slept like logs to the constant lullaby of the surf washing the beach not 200 yards from our heads. But on nights of big blows we'd be woken by the crash of the waves and the screaming of the unopposed wind as it hit it's first obstruction- our house 'O-Pip'. In the morning we'd stagger downstairs to find Dad guarding the bulwarks with 6x2's nailed to the floor and wall supporting the front of the house from falling down. None of us could believe that our house would actually collapse but my father's fear was real enough. After a big storm the world seemed fresh made. The beach could be totally transformed. The high dunes of yesterday gone and huge boulders, the bare bones of the beach, standing clear and scoured by the still angry, brown surf. And then there was the loot! There was always something extraordinary washed up. Once an elephant seal taking refuge from the storm, another time a 44 gallon drum which Dad opened spilling concentrated ammonia everywhere. There was always driftwood (one huge board my father carried up from the beach single-handed formed the slab top of his work bench), glass floats from fishing nets and sometimes even the marker poles from the floats which were just the best rangoon for making fishing rods. The beach was my country. I spent hours walking its length, exploring the pools and caves at either end or clambering over the rocks around the headlands. But the beach wasn't the edge of my world. Beyond the beach was the wide Pacific stretching forever back and forward in time and out to that incredible crisp line of hard blue gently bowing to the curve of the planet itself.

'Space, the final frontier'

A quantum leap beyond the horizon, but strangely enough more privately my own realm, was the sky. I had a window through the coal black night sky - a reflecting telescope. Night after chilly night I would sit for hours peering through the tiny eyepiece catching ghostly glimpses of distant nebulae and star clusters, mastering the skill of 'averted vision'- seeing something clearly by not looking too directly at it. Our moon and the other planets are bright and close enough to see remarkably clearly. Through the lens I could sit in space and watch whole worlds spinning slowly just in front of me; see the rings of Saturn, and the cloud belts of Jupiter and the slight midriff bulge that both these frozen ammonia giants have developed from rotating so quickly; the seasonally changing icecaps and occasional planet spanning dust storms of Mars; and one special summer the four great moons of Jupiter passing in front of each other each time they passed in their orbits, eclipsing each other, two moons would creep slowly, inexorably towards each other and then one would suddenly 'wink' out and as suddenly reappear many minutes later. The moon was a constant companion. I knew its phases at all times and would always know exactly where to find it in the sky day or night. The telescope gave me an astronaut's eye view allowing me to skim close over the surface of the smooth dark grey 'seas' and scale the mile high peaks of the scarred and battered highlands. I was obsessed by those other contemporary space travellers. The cosmonauts and astronauts. Perhaps it was from being born in 1957, not the year of the rat, but the year of the sputnik! Perhaps it was because of the media circus and undiluted propaganda surrounding the American space effort. Perhaps it was an awareness of the fundamental change in human perspective that accompanied such an adventure. I recorded that whole first lunar walk from our valve radio with a 3" reel to reel tape recorder complete with the crackles and clicks that still have as much meaning as the words spoken: "One small pppft for man, one giant krrkk leap for kksshhhsst-kind". Its hard to believe that they ever got there! Its hard to believe that getting there was ever so important. Still the most powerful image from that whole era and one that I could never see through peering into my telescope is the cloud wrapped, sapphire ball of life that we live on rising in a jet black sky above a bleached, grey, dead world.

CURRENT SOURCES

"The historical understanding vested in a [work of art] doesn't simply illustrate an historical point of view; it can't be adequately accounted for by any biographical details (even with 'psychological' insights)...or even by what the artist says is his or her historical interest or understanding. History isn't just a 'background', or set of occasional references, but is infused in the creative process." Ian Burn in 'Is art history any use to artists?'

The 'Work' - what I've made and what it says to me.

I am a designer-maker. I design and make objects. The design is a creative concept that is realised and modulated through making. The verb/noun 'work' encompasses both the making (verb) and the made object (noun). I dislike the all encompassing phrase 'my work'. It is so deterministic it feels like a coffin. It makes the creative process seem so clear cut and well defined and the accumulation of made objects internally consistent and whole. I have been struggling to understand the process of making and the made object for as long as I have been actively making. This analysis includes an ongoing monologue in my sketchbooks and occasional published artist's statements but also a dialogue with the finished objects.

The Monologue - excerpts from previous writing.

1..Sketchbook. Mid-1987.

"Functional objects are commodities in our society. People are more interested in the price of a piece and how it compares with mass produced items of similar function than in the artist's intent. Many more of us are much more familiar with bargain hunting than with artistic appreciation and design evaluation. Functional objects have their own history and are judged using a value system that each of us has developed through a lifetime of interaction with the objects around us. Many artists choose to draw attention to this almost complacent perception of our surroundings by creating superficially familiar objects that don't function as we would expect or vice versa. Wood also has its particular history and associations. Wooden objects are expected to take a traditional or low-tech form; to be plain, sturdy and most of all 'woody'."

2..'The Canberra Collection 2' Catalogue Graduating student's show, Canberra School of Art. November 1987.

"Not all contemporary designer-makers are in the business of producing expensive, finely finished objects to pander to the tastes of jaded consumers. Many of us see our work as directly antithetical to the 20th Century trend towards poor quality, depersonalised, mass production; where the main aim of design is to sustain consumerism. We oppose the proliferation of objects designed to create the evanescent self-gratification of a 'new toy'; whose appeal rapidly wanes as fashion changes or the object itself decays and fails prematurely. A legacy of the Modern Movement of design is the centralisation of production in established 'design centres', with the consequent absurdity of our importation of 'quality' furniture from overseas; maintaining the 'cultural cringe' and denying our individuality and independence.By our very presence contemporary designer-makers provide an alternative to the 'international marketplace'. These motivations provide just part of the expressive content of the work you see here. Each designer brings his/her own personal imagery and philosophy to play in creating these individual pieces. Blending aesthetic, functional and technical considerations we produce objects which age gracefully, function efficiently and with each encounter reveal more and more of the subtle detail of the designer's intent."

3..Sketchbook. August 1988.

"I see furniture as sculpture on a human scale for everyday use and appreciation. As a designer-maker I strive to create pieces which combine a powerful visual presence with a richness of meaning and detail only revealed fully through interaction over time. Aesthetic considerations are balanced with functional constraints so that the finished object performs its function efficiently and unobtrusively. Furniture occupies a premier position in our living spaces and our physical and mental well being depends on its correct design. I'm intrigued by the paradox of objects which can stimulate the intellect and stand strongly on their own as 'sculpture' while simultaneously performing essentially mundane services and blending into the domestic or commercial environment."

4..Letter to Chris McElhinny. March 1989.

"I feel like I'm on the verge of comprehending what's going on in my imagery. I see a sort of chink or hint of light somewhere in between all of the oscillating concepts of structure, function, scale, surface, association and geometry that feels like the heart or core of what I'm striving for. As soon as I try to circumscribe it, it loses its vitality. The only way to come to grips with it is to produce; to let my body work with the material while my 'unconscious' plays with the associations and then let the finished objects express that 'heart' for me. I'm constantly in conflict as to whether this has any significance to anyone else but me or if it has any relevance to sculptural debate (I fear it's relevant to a 1930's or 5th Century BC. debate but not to a 1990's one - oh hum) or whether I'm just a crazy egomaniac demanding attention for nothing at all....."

5.. Alison Britton. 'Beyond the Dovetail' catalogue essay. July 1991.

"All kinds of awareness of life and society and appropriateness are part of the bag of skill that the artist needs, as well as the astute correlation of hand and eye. ...acquiring the SENSE OF PURPOSE, the discovery of what is viable and WORTH MAKING, in the current and changing situation, is the hard part. In this pursuit the cerebral skills and the outward eye on the world, general awareness and nous, are the useful things to have. Some makers miss this point, get bogged down in practicalities, techniques and recipes, and seduced by what was traditionally useful. But what I would define as our main responsibility is THE SKILLFUL ACHIEVEMENT OF RELEVANCE. But in the industrialised, multi-nationalised and largely irreligious western world, (a) clear context for art and craft has long gone. ...the craft made artefact, the independent hand-made object, has become a self-conscious thing seeking to justify itself against the mass-produced, cheaper and more rational competition. CRAFTS ARE AN EXTRA.

6..Sketchbook. October, 1991.

While working with Richard La Trobe Bateman in England I found myself in sympathy with much of his design philosophy as outlined here in a catalogue essay from 'Hand and Mind - An Exhibition of the Woodworker's Art', 1984.

"I see my position as one free from two of the most limiting influences on furniture; on the one hand the mindless pursuit of 'fine' work like some sort of woodwork show-off, and on the other hand the limitation on design dictated by having to sell an object as many times as possible. The one expresses, what is to me, a normally unacceptable desire for luxury and personal aggrandisement - and the other expresses the banality of our suburban culture's pursuit of innocuously packaged convenience. I am interested in the tension created by the requirements of structure, utility, form, material and technique in one object. Every day I remember that wood grows on trees."

However, I did see aspects of my own work that contrasted with his.

"- contrast of materials and the search for fundamental metaphors and associations. - the primacy of the aesthetic values of wood as a 'currency' for designer-made work. That is, by appreciating and accentuating the tactile, visual, etc. characteristics of timber in our designs we revitalise the appreciation of these values in the viewer..."

7..Sketchbook. November 1991.

"Good Design- My definition of a well designer-made object. It must hit the mark with three criteria (not in any rank). The quality of the object being greatest at best fit of all three.
FUNCTION well and effortlessly (no jaggedy bits or risks involved)
COMMUNICATE the aesthetic of the designer-maker (intentionally!)
APPEAR NATURAL or effortless: like a traditional or natural object (ie. disappear?)

Any one of these can be sacrificed for the others but only in the presence of all three does the object sing.
A fourth criterion could be
SOCIO-POLITICAL RELEVANCE?" (ie. 'the skilful achievement of relevance').

The process

The passages quoted from my sketchbooks address various aspects of the making process and detail some of the changing features of my personal aesthetic standpoint. They don't provide a rigorous analysis of what the working process and the finished works represent to me at the moment. To do this I must tease out the various components of the creative process that underlie my making and elucidate some of the broader themes that influence my making and typify my work to date.

The process by which ideas for work come to the surface of my mind is, despite its familiarity, a mystery. More often than not, more or less complete objects, forms or details bubble up to consciousness to be worked on and refined or played with for a while and then rejected. A particularly rewarding creative place for me is the 'daydream'. I like to do my designing on a particularly comfortable, feather-stuffed, 3-seater lounge on which my companion's grandmother once had her afternoon naps. We are convinced that she innocently impregnated it with 'Z's' so that no future user can resist the pull into the hypnagogic state. In that state between dream and wakefulness I float free from the rational process, the concepts which surface can be bizarre, apt, surprisingly lateral or totally inappropriate. Once the concept or germ of an idea has emerged from the mists it has to be worked on and sorted out - working towards a resolved, independent object. As a solo designer-maker I simply don't have time to make manifest every piece that occurs to me. The choice of what to make and what to 'put on the back burner' or reject is often a very conscious one; where I assess a particular idea's suitability for a particular client, exhibition or body of work. I also consider whether a piece is 'me' or not! Obviously everything I design is, strictly speaking, my creation; even when aspects of it may be derivative or referential to other works.

There are subconscious criteria in play as well, which could be defined as 'taste' or 'style', but which defy clear definition and circumscription. In fact, there is a feeling of foreboding when trying to clearly spotlight these subliminal components; almost a mythological fear that by trying to examine them too closely, they will disappear. A concern that in the process of delineating and understanding my own 'imaginative territory', its boundaries will become so clearly defined that crossing them into new creative territory will be increasingly difficult.

All of these aspects of the creative process are evolving and develop in relationship to both conscious thought processes, reactions to what I have made already and, of course, the constant development of the 'association matrix'.

There are several major considerations which determine my overall aesthetic. These are not so much design principles or particular aspects of the completed objects but ongoing themes which dominate my making practice.

Language of materials

My primary training has been in the craft of working with timber. I have acquired a very detailed knowledge of handtools, power tools, timber technology, jointing structures, specialised techniques such as laminating, steam bending, plywood construction, and veneering, and finishing. This knowledge is both an intellectual understanding and a physical training; a co-ordination and development of both body and mind (if that distinction can be made).

During this personal exploration I have developed a refined sensitivity to the associative nuances of the materials I use: a feeling for its varied lightness, strength, resilience, elasticity, weight, durability, colour, grain, softness, hardness, succeptability to wear and weathering, smell, taste, history of use, geographical origins, ecology and cost.

The curiosity that fuelled my exploration of wood as a medium has continued and propelled my explorations of paper, hot glass, patinated non-ferrous metals, steel,and various applied finishes. These materials are the 'palette' with which I design. Each has its particular characteristics, both physical and emotional, just as the colours used in painting have particular associations and nuances. And just as a painter must understand the effects of colour and how to control them a designer must understand the 'language of materials' to communicate clearly. By continuing to use and explore new techniques I develop my proficiency in this language. Currently, I am interested in using materials which have the longest standing associations with human culture (what I call BC. materials as opposed to AD. materials such as plastics, aluminium carbon fibre, etc), and in working with designs which leave materials in their most 'primal' state and with forms that most readily allow the materials to speak clearly and universally.

Community, collaboration and context

The desire to work with materials which neither I nor my workshop is equipped to handle has allowed me to work frequently with other artists and in other artist's workshops. I share my current workshop with two other furniture designer-makers and have always studied, worked and taught within group and co-operative situations. I know that many craftspeople, particularly furniture designer-makers in wood, crave isolation for their work and mistrust exposure to broader influences. But for me communication with the broadest possible artistic community is vital. I feel that the work I do is relevant only if others experience and value it. Similarly, I feel that I can develop as an artist only through interacting with other artists and their work.

Expression

Design as artistic expression is a relatively unexplored concept. Modernism posed design as a discipline which aims towards objects with universal application and appeal: this seem to leave little room for the 'artistic' ideal of individual expression. However, contemporary design through the development of niche markets, limited batch products enabled by CAD/CAM, and the continued growth and sophistication of the 'crafts' into 'designer-making' across a broad media base, allows a more flexible interpretation of the ideals of design. This is an issue for all of the 'crafts'; what function does the hand-crafted object serve in the industrial age when people's furniture requirements can be met easily and cheaply through mass production.

A hand-made, one-off piece must serve a different function than pure utility. It must encapsulate values that are not found in its ubiquitous equivalents or act as a vehicle for artistic communication.

The Dialogue - An analysis of some specific works and themes.

At the beginning of this section on 'work' I mentioned my discomfort with the determinism of the phrase 'my work'. I don't doubt that some artists see their work as clearly defined and internally consistent. I also see the body of work that I have created as a 'whole' in the sense that every piece seems to fit in the jigsaw that is me. In many ways, however, it is actually internally contradictory; composed of several streams which occasionally approach each other but which generally flow well apart with one stream containing objects whose design language directly contradicts the critical criteria of another stream. These different approaches were not visible 'a priori' nor are the definitive of the range of the work that I have done or will do. They have only become visible to me by looking back over the various objects I have made and the various projects that entered my mind and progressed, at least a short way, along the realisation pathway.

The major streams that seem to be current to me are (in no particular order or hierarchy)
stretched membranes
stacking/layering
lightness
the language of materials
exploration of solid geometry; especially spherical and conical geometry.

I will discuss some of these streams in the following sections.

The workshop presents a constant view of raw timber and wooden components of various dimensions 'stickered' for even drying. These stacked structures are aesthetically exciting with their apparent lightness, openness, airiness; functionally apt and succinct; and metaphorically rich with connotations of scaffolding, cages, log cabins, bridges, 'cuisenaire', and for me, the massive timber temples of Japan. But what to do with this evocative a simply erected structure? Its inherent function has little to do with accommodating the human body. And the purity and simplicity of the form is compromised when the even repetition of the components is broken to insert elements which allow human interaction.

One answer, for me has been to examine the formal structural significance of 'stacking' in traditional Japanese wooden architecture. Ancient temple structures dating back to the 5th Century AD still survive in contemporary Japan. Some still in their original state, others having been, repaired, restored or rebuilt many times over the ensuing generations. Fortunately, in Japan, the tradition of hereditary master builders has continued down to the present day and the knowledge and building systems embodied in these venerable architectural structures can be verified by the descendants of their builders.

Structurally the most impressive aspect of the massive temple structures is the way in which layers of structure are 'stacked' on top of each other. Beginning at the ground level with massive single foundation stones supporting the main pillars, atop these pillars are placed beams in a 'post and lintel' structure locking a line of individual pillars together, perpendicularly across these beams are laid another series of beams to lock t he series of pillars together, atop these are another set to support the roof beams which will cantilever out from the walls, and so the structure increases in height and complexity, each layer depending on and integrating the layer below.

The link between each layer is simple and direct but the final structure intermeshes so efficiently that the massive weight of the roof can be supported through typhoons and earthquakes. The forces and masses that need to be resolved in furniture making are of a smaller scale, but in many ways the structures, by being simpler and on a human scale, are more apparent. Although, such simple stacking is an inefficient way to resolve structural problems on a small scale, the simplicity of both construction and form, combined with references to more massive architectural structures can lead to an evocative solution. This layering of orthogonal elements has been an recurring theme in some of my designs.

The 'Valet' (1987) was the first of these with a simple cube of pale timber (composed of three drawers stacked in a block) supported between four rather delicate, tapering pillars by an intermediate set of simple flat planes and narrow beams. Following this has been the 'Tuross' series of furniture, beginning with the first Tuross Dining Table (1988) - bridge-like pylons, braced and cross braced with a series of simple interlocking beams of increasingly delicate section which finally support a thin cantilevered top of heavily sandblasted timber - a delicate bridge between diners?

Some pieces which I would place in the above 'stacking stream' are characterised by massive solid timber elements. But another stream of work directly opposes this tendency.

The 'Fatman' streams explore the most minimal and delicate of structures. Lightness has been something of a design crusade for me. The ultimate test for a chair has been 'Can I lift it with one finger?'. This attitude stems from the revulsion I feel at seeing massive slabs of timber, highly polished, with four legs stuck on called designer-made furniture: made?.. yes, designed?.. no! Timber is beautiful stuff and everyone adores it, so using large quantities of gorgeously figured or highly embellished precious timbers (recently torn out of the rainforests of the developing world) represents the height of craftsmanship to many. To me it embodies the morality of a bygone imperialistic era/error.

Furthermore it neglects the wonderful intrinsic values of timber that lay deeper than the lustrous sheen of a polished board - strength, lightness, resilience , pliability and renewability.

The designers who really understood and worked with these values were not furniture makers but the first aeronautical engineers - Lawrence Hargraves with his box kites, and those masters of spruce and ash, Wilbur and Orville Wright. These first engineering adventures in search of ultra-light, ultra-strong structures in timber and cloth have been an ongoing inspiration. Sir Lawrence's creations were circling above my home at Stanwell Park decades before I lived there and have continued creating gentle, soaring arabesques in my mind.

The 'Fatman' lamps were the first pieces I have made in direct tribute to early aircraft. But they were preceded and followed by several works exploring paper membranes as structural elements.Firstly, the 'Between the lines' screen and latterly the 'Fathy' and 'Detante' lamps which feature domes of handmade and laminated paper which are only minimally supported by their base structures. Although these thin membranous forms stretched over or perched atop minimal frameworks are derived initially from man-made wing structures, the texture of the handmade paper and the skeletal supports evokes natural forms such as pupae, seed pods or winged seeds and dried animal remains. These associations are ones I am continuing to explore.

The 'Fatman' stream explores the lightness, strength and elasticity of timber and compares this with the fineness, translucency and incredible strength of handmade paper. Another characteristic of timber which can be overlooked by furniture designer-makers is its plasticity.

The work which I think of as belonging to the 'Conics' stream has exploited this plasticity through forms which defy the rigidity and rectilinearity expected of wooden furniture. In many ways the tools and especially the machinery developed to process timber have evolved with the rectilinearity of the expected finished product in mind.

It is incredibly easy to create lengths of timber and joints which are perfectly square and straight with standard woodworking machinery. To defy this unwritten 'law of rectilinearity' is difficult and expensive and its success depends on the eye and hand skills of the maker; a threat to craftsmen wedded to powerful but limited machinery.

The 'Conic' pieces, such as the 'Zephyr' suite and 'Zafu' table, draw on imagery derived from detailed observation of both the natural world and the constructed world of pure mathematics and geometry. Both worlds have an implicit underlying order but display a myriad of rich and detailed forms derived from this order. This is what I have attempted in the conic pieces, utilising an underlying mathematical order based on projections of circular geometry to generate forms evocative of but not mimicking natural forms: the bow of the horizon, the loop of the rings of Saturn, the buttressed roots of mangrove trees...

CONCLUSIONS

The strands of the work I have done are varied and to some extent contradictory, as are the strands of my life. Keeping the strands clear and untangled is part of the work of tying and knitting them together to form the overall fabric of my 'oeuvre'. The works produced embody not only the processes and design decisions that went directly into their making but the experiences, perceptions and memories that have gone into the making of me.

This writing is an exploration of my perception of the creative process. Like the making of an object, the writing has involved teasing apart various strands of my understanding of what I do and plying them back together to form a coherent unity. This hasn't resulted in a clear and rational analysis or circumscription of my creativity, but that isn't what I've been looking for. I've not generally been clear about the rationale underlying my work at the time of making; understanding only comes once the work is more distant in time and located within a broader perspective. Circumscription places borders to creativity and I fear a determinism which could limit my artistic peregrinations.