Thoughts On the House

My mind races some times, most days, tracing a thought, a passage of thinking about the house interior coming along with finished rooms being made ready for me to design the pieces for. A chair, a table, a new rocker design. These things float in and out in the room space I picture in my brain. I have had mixed feelings about the first pieces and then too the first piece we make. This early period in 2020 presents me with that rare opportunity to enter an empty room and thoughtfully consider what I might want to make for it first. It's not so much thinking about what might go here or there so much as considering what is missing in the emptiness. A coffee table is nice to have somewhere, a wall piece to present an art piece or two, perhaps an end table, a sofa table or something for entertainment sound. Standing in an empty room, there's a different type of refreshment about it. I know, that's a strange word to use, but, then, is it really? It's not unlike my open sketch pad with my pencil poised over a new page of a beautiful unmarked sheet of paper. The open space challenges me, but it's more a sympathetic challenge, not a competitive one. The place feels like it is opening up to me to place that first line to a design as yet unformed but poised and ready for the pencil to commit my thoughts to paper. I have been here before and many times. I've trained my mind to look first at the design from first one perspective and then from another, left, right, centre and above too. I move it around the page of my mind and then look down from above more and then from the back. The curve here seems right but then I change it with a pencil stroke and there it is, the unknown radius that so fits the distance and the height. This is how my mind works to unlock a design that might have been there for years but as yet is untapped.

My first thought on entering my empty room is not so much a table but somewhere first to sit. It stems from being contemplative. My mind is in making and not buying. Eventually, I will likely buy a soft armchair, perhaps a couch, or do I make something and it's there what my intent begins to become solid on the page. Negative space begins to yield, to absorb and it's there that I see that positive shape emerge in the form of a chair. Shape comes slowly, not all at styling once and often over many days. Before entering the room I stand in the doorway to stare and look. My thoughts embrace the idea of a chair as the first piece in the house. Not something static but something more floating. Is a rocking chair appropriate for the initial undertaking? Back and forth my thoughts go and I see then that a rocking chair is indeed something anyone can truly relax into. Specifically, it has become something I have come to accept after coming from a culture where I never experienced living with a rocking chair around. It is definitely something I can relax with.

Chairs are of course usually one the more complex pieces of furniture pieces even experienced furniture makers avoid. Even the square and blocky can be awkward, time heavy and when you add in some curved components, a scalloped seat and such like that, the complexities just keep expanding. But I want this challenge early on in the houseful. This is what I plan to design and make for my first piece in the living room. What my challenge then is to distill it down to make it doable for all.

I have some different woods but have yet to decide what the wood will be. I have some mesquite I want to use somewhere in the house but no 2" stock which I really need. I will be back in Texas in a few months so that might work for me to find some pieces to bring back with me. Alternatively, I thought too to laminate some for the thicker sections. That can be done creatively so that too might be the answer!

Rocking chairs are always stand-alone pieces though I once went to a home where they had six rockers, all different, all hand made, and all very comfortable. This was an American home and it is more likely you will find the welcome of a rocker than anywhere else in the world. Though we tend to see rocking chairs as more a relaxing chair, many such chairs were indeed working chairs, often without arms on Southern and Southwest porches where men and women worked their crafts of weaving baskets and other craftwork. On a rocker, you can micro-adjust your position for different tasks and then, reaching to the porch floor for more weavers to work into the ribs, you had a readily available supply to work with. Rocking chairs find a home in American nurseries too. A comely place to sit and nurse the baby to sleep, read a book or just sip your tea. I have used my design of a craftsman-style rocking chair for three decades so far. It is indeed very comfortable with the leather seat and the wide arms. I love it. Rockers are at home in living rooms, large kitchens, bedrooms and especially dens if you have a larger house. In the UK we do not have wrap-around porches to add to the living space, unfortunately. Mostly it's not necessary as we don't need to move outdoors to escape the heat and humidity as in the USA before airconditioning came in.

Let's think rocking chair as a more contemporary complementary piece as popular as it was to the US Southern Living culture but differently presented as a comfort chair for all. On the one hand, yes, it's a stand-alone piece but then too one equally complementary to the comfort of a nice, living, lived-in room.