The end of my fifth week at Woodland Heritage was energising.
How do we navigate the opportunities and challenges of designing and making with natural, renewal and local materials?
This was the topic of the day at the Make Good Symposium at the V&A, London. This fascinating and, at times, mind-bending day was made possible by John Makepeace OBE and is a ten-year project launched in 2022. It brings together an annual display at the Dr Susan Weber Gallery of Furniture, the symposium and a programme of acquisitions dedicated to renewable, natural materials.
Lofty goals today, matched by the lofty ceiling.
Alex de Rijke and Kat Scott’s presentation shows the welcome appearance of Oak Ironmongery by Alex Mowat, Woodland Heritage Trustee. Whitney Sawmill has one of these gracing its front door.
Image by Ellie Walpole
Highlights
There is so much I could share, but a few highlights from the day, in addition to speaking with John, were learning from Henry Tadros about Ercol’s history with Elm and more recent (relative to their amazing history as a company) use of Ash, leading to work with Grown in Britain to use British wood. This led into a broad overview of forestry and the availability and use of hardwoods by Ian Tubby from the Forestry Commission. Thank you Ian.
Seeing the work from Alex de Rijke and Kat Scott of dRMM was very inspiring. Their talk ranged from the use of composite wood materials to explanations of the impact of storing carbon in wooden objects and buildings. Kat’s explanations really landed for me, as someone with so much to learn!
Composite materials – trending upwards in the built environment?
His Dark Materials
Two presentations from Summer Islam of Material Cultures and Indy Johar of Dark Matter detailed incredible optimism and opportunity. Summer’s story of a straw and wooden structure led into Indy’s fast paced dance through the next 30 – 40 years of fundamental questions about material availability and the democracy of materials globally.
A presentation from Joseph Bray at Sylva Foundation on the topic of ‘Reaching Out’ told really uplifting stories of making, with the makers themselves the star of the show.
“I was struck by Joseph’s focus on the culture, environment and sense of community that was created at the Wood School; a partnership between the Foundation and the V&A.”
Benchmark
Finally, Sean Sutcliffe of Benchmark Furniture, showed how his company approaches sustainability, their approach titled Made WELL, with a beautiful presentation including some of their striking furniture. There was so much fantastic detail illustrating what a company can achieve when led in the right direction. What stood out for me was a story about a hotel reception table being reshaped for a new phase of the building, with no new material added to the solid wood table.
Sean told us about this happening again at an Oxford hotel which had Benchmark Furniture in its rooms reimagined, despite originally being made some thirty years prior. This is the beauty of solid wood furniture in the right, skilled hands and with the right motivations.
I could go on and on. I guess you had to be there! I encourage you to keep an eye on the next symposium.
You can see the programme and its contributors, and sign up for news about the 2024 symposium here.
Thank you to John Makepeace OBE and the V&A.
Verdun?
So, how does Verdun and WW1 fit into all of this? Well, that will be covered in my next blog. In the meantime, I’ll leave you with this picture of Oak, grown from an acorn collected at the battlefield.
