One of the web sites I occasionally watch has some links up to the “International Contemporary Furniture Fair.” Most of what I see there is foreign enough to me that it makes me uncomfortable and gives me a chance to question why I react to it the way I do. But then there are also occasional creative things I like.
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I hope not!
Yesterday I posted an item about a glue stain entitled "Yuck". I think that title would have served well to describe the photos you published. Those items don't define "fine woodworking" as I understand it.
Frosty
Tomorrow's landfill.
Lataxe the unfashionable.
where we're going?
Golly, I hope not. The general style being shown there reminds me of the saying, "Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should."
lwilliams
consider it to be like one of those Paris fashion shows where emaciated models wear absurd clothes that no real woman would wear. There might be a real nugget of inspiration that will inspire a real innovation, but mostly its a celebration of showng off.
probably not. yet...
Being one who is particularly fond of modern design in all it's incarnations, I can appreciate the content of your links.
I would like to second the notion that ICFF is more like a European (or NY, or LA) fashion show than a sign of things to come. When's the last time your wife came home in a Kevlar dress with high-heel muck boots and blue hair?
I, unlike one other poster, saw many examples of fine woodworking while exploring the links.
Regards, JM
Where's the love?
I'd figure you guys would be all jived up about seeing Chris Schwarz playing the banjo.
We Could Be Curmudgeons!
I suspect with every new furniture period, there were those that said Oh No! I had an architecture student friend in the 60's who designed a "contemporary" chair that was a plastic coated foam cube with a cube cut out of one edge, into which one placed their bottom! He was trying for a design patent.
Any how, just because furniture has a contemporary look does not mean that is not worthy furniture, especially with regard to the construction details. The attached photo shows some furniture through the ages. As you can imagine, when they first appeared, someone probably said "yuck". The upper right chest is from the first of the ICF links above.
Jerry
I agree with your concept, Jerry, but some designers (and their styles) never get beyond the yuck factor - even though their work might survive for centuries. But, in the final analysis, "yuck" is a matter of personal taste.
Very Good Point... Direct and about tells it all...
I for one only like the lower right chest of drawers and second best would be the striped on above it.. Dose that make me a fool? We all have different tastes.
Most of what I make is of my own design (with much thought about something I have seen in a picture). Not a copy but ideas based on the form/style.
Just to let you know a bit on how I think.
I like the old 1950's style See: http://www.karlkemp.com/searchselect.php?mysearchterms=1950&gclid=CI6E4pf47KECFdZO5wodcRiTLQ
Not that I would spend the time on trying to make one of those 1950's chairs!. And I love Retro style pieces as well as Old English and Spanish/Mexico? OK, that furniture you see all around the southwest of the USA and in Mexico. It is wonderful and the really nice stuff is hand painted?
And when I first married.. I brought my new (and only) bride into an empty old house I bought for her. It was ment a supprise for her. No outstanding features for the old house except that it was empty. She cried?.. I think it was the house or her new husband? Not sure.. But she still stayed the night with me..... On wooden floors....
Anyway, I let her pick out 'her' furniture for the new home that she HAD to live in... No other home for her except going back to her Father.. (He was a wonderful man, by the way....)
Mind you... this was in the very, very early 1960's and she had money to spend that I had saved up for years. She only bought a bed and mattres for us... She was not above spending money.. Her father had plenty of it but was not that free to give it away.. He surrived the1930's depression...
I knew I would be drafted soon so I inlisted into the USA Army.. I was given the job of a Tank mechanic? The first thing I saw was a 8 inch self propelled artillery on tank tracks.. I thought of my wife going into a new and strange place.
I was happy! I saw this huge machine and I was in love again.. I served my time and came back home.. NOTE: She tried to live with me for a time but the local Texas bugs and rattlesnakes got to her... She went back home and her father took care of our taxes for the home..
She went back home and when I surrived the Nuke threat of the 60's.. .. I had a home of many different style furniture. She made a room of every style I liked...
The Schwarz
>I'd figure you guys would be all jived up about seeing Chris Schwarz playing the banjo.<
Too funny.
Design???
What were woodworkers saying when Eames brought out his now classic chair? What was your oppinion when you saw Sam Maloof's 'long-tail' rocking chair. Yes, TODAY these pieces are considered classic and wonderful. I'll bet dollars to bent nails that woodworkers of the time said... what in He** was this guy thinking. On the other hand, possibly 1 percent of what you saw will ever see the light of day (production).
Like the above mentioned fashion shows, there is always someone who will buy this stuff, sometimes for its shock value, other times because they want what no one else has and sometimes because they see something that we don't see.. Back in the 1950's, one of my fathers customers was buying art by Warhold, , Lichtenstein, Indiana, Raushenberg and many more similar artists for mere pennies because he thought that these guys would ONE DAY be popular, if not famous. Yes, he bought a lot of duds too, but he was right so many times that it totally overshaddowed the times he was wrong. Mow I'm not saying we should buy this stuff, but there is someone who sees something we don't.
SawdustSteve Long Island, NY (E of NYC)
Trying to stand out
If you are asked to do something new, that draws attention to your company you are going to have to jar sensibilities and change something about the way it's been done before. Most of the products shown aren't made of wood, so it's hard to feel threatened by the direction taken. And some of the other stuff, is really quite interesting.
Most of these things are beyond prototypes. A company somewhere believes in them and thinks there is a market for them. And we, as a group, are probably not the market or demographic that they are trying to appeal... hard as it is for most of us to admit.
Peter
Peter,
Surprised, I am, that you offer what appears to be a justification for all that tat in terms of market appeal. Shurely shome mishtake, as "market appeal" has become synonomous with "current fad in the ever-accelerating and adman-contrived fashion cycles". Or "latest junk", to be more succinct. Are there no better schemes remaining for evaluting manufactured objects now? Is culture so reduced that even you cannot think of a rationale for this stuff other than transitory consumer-addiction?
As to the possibility that a random 1% selection of it may appeal to the market for longer than 10 minutes -j(unk becomes investment via longer-lived fad).......... Well, this is just more replacement of the soul in favour of the adding machine and some dollar bills, nothing to do with any intrinsic worth of those items. (At this point I feel obliged to mention that "worth"may be measured with many value-types other than dollars)
Lataxe, not content to be reduced to nothing but a consumer-clone.
market demographics
"And we, as a group, are probably not the market or demographic that they are trying to appeal... hard as it is for most of us to admit."
As the saying goes, Peter, I resemble that remark. ;-)
Design contests are usually intended to encourage strange (aka "creative") ideas. The point at which the public actually gloms onto some of those ideas is when we should be concerned, I suppose. ;-)
Rat Lamp
UHHHH, Thanks Mr Williams, It is going to take a while to get that image out of my head when I reach to turn on the lamp in the morning.
As for the future of wood working , no qualms here.... to each his own .
Is it possible that the images in the links are just the things that caught the eye of the blogger? Sure, there are some odd things there, but without seeing the show it's difficult to judge the quality of the craftsmanship of the peices shown.
I've been to shows where there were peices that really caught my eye- until I inspected them and thought "9th grade woodshop". While other creations were just bizarre to me, but clearly the creator invested a huge amount of time in working through the processes of bringing the object to existence and did it well.- wether I found of poor taste or not.
For me, the challenge - and enjoyment - of custom woodwoorking is creating things that, perhaps, I wouldn't think of on my own- but are the fancies of the people I build them for. My job is to build those things to the best of my ability and my aim is to exceed my clients' expectations.
dmd
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