A well-articulated imagination inspires imagination in others

Without thinking about it much, starting one’s woodworking career with one of the most challenging products in the furniture line-up might seem odd, if not backward. But I don’t think chairmaking poses more difficulty than most other woodworking avenues when you compare the challenges cleanly. If you are talking with cabinetmakers while standing in a cabinet shop, the problems of chairmaking look like a foreign language. But if chairmaking is your first language, it’s no big deal. Having learned woodworking steeped in the language of chairs, I find it easy to see solutions to the organically shaped problems I run into.

The challenge of cabinetmaking is a flat, straight, square thing. And I can tell you from experience in the shop I had in 1981 that the flat, straight, and square game was not going to happen. I had neither the tools nor the skills to pull that off. But given a good clean log to split out and make chair parts without electric tools, this game soon became second nature. The vocabulary I developed in doing this doesn’t translate well to conventional cabinetmaking lingo. Nothing fits! Not that chairmaking is easy; it’s just easier if some other “first language” isn’t blocking the thinking. The whole flat, straight, square thing gets bypassed, and parts find a more organically fitting relationship.

Thinking of chairmaking as a different language helps me feel better about how terrible a cabinet maker I am. I can design artsy forms that work well and look great in the cabinet arena. But I design and build from a chairmaker’s perspective. The economy of that approach does not fit the market’s expectation of cabinet value. The language that guides one fluidly through making a chair feels like summersaults when applied to cabinet forms. Likewise, a cabinetmaker will usually approach a chair from a cabinetmaker’s perspective, creating designs that flow from their language, limitations, and efficiencies. That’s an observation rather than a judgment. But from that perspective, one imagines and generates a different form. The furniture that evolves from different languages speaks to different audiences, and the differing results of each can speak to open hearts happy to have found what they were looking for.

I like the use of language in this case because when one imagines something new, one shares an idea in a way similar to what a storyteller does. The idea will form differently depending on which language one speaks as well as the culture the storyteller comes from. I have noticed that the broader my skills vocabulary grows, the broader the range of ideas that find me. I also welcome how the influence of my cultural background flavors my designs. As much as I try to deliver design ideas cleanly, they still carry some of the flavor of the pipes I deliver them through.

The languages we speak developed over generations out of a need to communicate ideas at the time the words for these ideas were generated. What matters at any given time has a lot to do with the culture and challenges of the time, but it also has to do with what one is capable of imagining, which is influenced by culture. As new ideas get shared, a language evolves, and new words (skills) develop to communicate and understand imagined ideas better.

Your ability to share what comes through your imagination increases as your language develops. One good imagination, well articulated, inspires imagination in others. I hold this sharing of imagination as the most valuable aspect of language (skills) and the most valuable part of what craft can bring to the world through its language.

Having specialists in furniture design allows the exploration of ideas in depths that the jack of all trades won’t visit. The experience of exploring deeper arenas within a craft can be fabulous for nerds like myself. People with less patience will take a different path, have different experiences, and learn different things, but not necessarily fewer things or less valuable ones. You hereby witness the confession of a deep-dive chairmaker.

The Sami people of Scandinavia have over 200 words for snow. These folk live and die by the way different snows behave. I live in the Southeast USA and have used the word snow for snow(unless sleet counts). Snow impacts us a little here, so we seldom need to know more than whether it is snowing or raining. But when I am trying to teach someone about the character I am looking for and can see in a particular piece of wood, I not only lack the words, but even if I had them, they would usually have nowhere to land in the student’s mind.

For this sharing of ideas to work, there needs to be a corresponding or shared perspective to connect with in order for a word or perspective to have meaning for the person receiving the concept. So, developing and sharing ideas requires a shared openness to developing communication of these ideas. This shared value allows a language to grow and expand an individual’s ability to conceive and convey an idea.

We all make things for different reasons, and I find it useful to have some clarity about why I do this. My reasons have evolved with the language of my skills and opportunities that arose through my development as a chairmaker. But the most important thing I can do is to continue to share my imagination and inspire others. I will do that from the perspective of a chairmaker and with my evolving language. The success of this sharing will require attention to whether these ideas are falling on receptive landing pads and my willingness to keep talking, writing, and learning new ways to connect. This digital newsletter is one. So, I will keep writing until I run out of things worth sharing. I invite you to keep reading and growing your landing pad in the process, and I hope you write back.

So, please subscribe, and let’s turn this monologue into a conversation worth having.

More to come,

Brian