COMPILED BY Steve Smith PHOTOS Jan Ras; Supplied
Known for handmade, solid-wood furniture that pairs contemporary design with traditional craftsmanship, the man behind James Mudge Furniture Studio gives us some insights into his work.
In the nearly two decades since he founded his studio, this Cape Town-based furniture maker’s bespoke, meticulously handcrafted creations have become a benchmark in South African furniture design. We visited him at his new factory and showroom in Paarden Eiland to find out more about his design journey – and his creative process.
IT STARTED WITH A TREEHOUSE…
“My dad was a furniture maker, but he was also a musician. He studied piano and classical guitar, and he also studied engineering. He really got me into that mentality of making things, whether it was go-karts – or, when I was six years old, a treehouse. I bought wood from the hardware store on my dad’s account, had it delivered to my neighbour’s house (because she had the perfect tree), and built it without ever asking her. Luckily, she was a friendly lady who not only let me build it, but brought me cake to eat. “So yes, I got into making things at a very early age, and I’d often spend time at the factory in Knysna with my dad.
He employed about 40 cabinet makers and had very basic machines, so his business relied on people’s actual hand skills. They taught me a lot about wood and how to work it – and because my dad was even buying huge logs of wood at auction, I was seeing the entire process, from cutting those logs into planks to drying them, and then making furniture. When I got older, I helped to run the business for a while – but I didn’t want to be a 25-year-old living on a farm in the Crags, so I went off to see the world.
“I had studied architecture, but I found the design process to be too long, and quite often frustrated by clients (and their granny’s ideas on kitchen design), budget constraints and council restrictions that dilute ideas until there’s nothing left of the original thought. Architecture was a wonderfully liberating course that unlocked the design world for me and informed my design process, but it’s a difficult profession.”
THE APPEAL OF DESIGNING FURNITURE
“Furniture design is basically a fast-tracked version of architecture. The entire process is mostly over in 10 weeks. It’s infinitely more satisfying – and, as a furniture designer, I can often be far more prescriptive with clients. They can see and feel my existing designs and materials, and they learn to trust my instincts.
“I think chairs are the pinnacle of furniture design, and are by far the most difficult to design. A chair must be light, strong, flexible and comfortable. It must also be as original and unique as possible, which is tough, given the thousands of chairs out there. I think furniture is a wonderful medium to explore design – and it allows my work to be inspired by philosophy, literature, ethics, logic, engineering, medicine and the human body, and nature.”
SUCCESSFUL DESIGN UTILISES ALL THE SENSES
“Design isn’t just a visual experience. When you’re sitting in a chair, you can feel the wood. How heavy was it when you lifted it to sit down? Was it balanced when you did that, or was it really back-heavy? When you sit at a table, can you smell the wood it’s made of, or the wax? When you work with teak, for example, you can smell it on your hands and clothes for days afterwards. Different woods also feel different – iroko, for example, has an amazing waxiness to it.
“You can also sense a well-finished piece of timber by touch. Our fingertips are incredibly sensitive – we are able to feel the pores of the wood – so the different finishes that we use are as much a part of our design as anything else. They must feel amazing without masking the feel of the timber; they must provide a good seal and prevent staining; and they must not turn the timber a funny yellow colour.
“The lightness of a chair, the feel of an upholstered fabric or the smell of a leather seat all play a huge role in our experience of an object. That end-user experience is what I spend all of my time trying to get right. People who buy and own our pieces might not understand why they like them – they just do, and that’s the reason. Understanding what people instinctively like is what design really is.”
DESIGN AND MANUFACTURE
“It’s important to differentiate design from manufacture. Modern tools such as 3D software and CNC machines are useful in calculating the measurements and angles necessary to manufacture quality furniture economically and at scale, but they are not good design tools. It’s always obvious when a CNC process or 3D design process has informed the design, instead of the other way around. No tool can make creative choices.
“When I make something, I’ll start with a hand sketch, then go straight to the workbench. That way, I’m able to ‘feel’ the process. The mental feedback from making a chair by hand, using the most basic hand tools, informs the size of the materials and the weight, as well as the all-important comfort of that chair.
“Because our furniture is then mostly made using CNCs, I’m often asked about my equipment and the influence of the advances in machinery. Are CNC machines cheating? Obviously not – man has used tools since the Stone Age. There is no difference between a stone axe and a hand- forged tempered hipster axe from Just Like Papa. They are both tools; the metal axe is just much more effective. In my dad’s business, the workers still used spokeshaves (you used to make wagon wheels with those) and I used routers and spindles to make furniture before CNCs became available. Tools have become more advanced, but all my designs are makeable without CNCs.
“My current range of designs is a result of a lifetime of experimenting with various heights, thicknesses, finishes, fixings, weights and lengths. Making things well, that last a lifetime, is difficult and challenging in a really good way. The more I learn, and the better I get at designing and making, the more I realise I can still improve!” | jamesmudge.com
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