Over the course of his career, Hampshire-based has moved from machine making to more of a studio approach and a focus on making chairs
Tell us about your background and training.
My father was an artist, illustrator and teacher. He gave my sister and me space in his studio when we were young children. This act of enlightened generosity on his part meant that I grew up in a professional creative atmosphere surrounded by lithographic plates and the smell of ink. He would take us with him to studios, printers and agents. My favourite space was my bench, a cooling coffee at hand and silence or quiet classical music in the background. Not much has changed since I was eight!
How did you first get interested in furniture making?
As a child I was a prolific model boat maker. By my teenage years I was also experimenting with musical instruments and small pieces of furniture. My father, spotting my three-dimensional leanings, encouraged me to do a degree in 3D design: I specialised in furniture.
How did you train?
My course was fully based in the studios and workshops at Leicester Polytechnic. The facilities were excellent and the technicians were great teachers and formed the basis of my technical training. We also had substantial input in presentation drawing and design development, business management and design history.
What was the first project you completed?
My first proper piece was a chair in ripple ash, it is still in our house.
What made you decide to set up your own furniture business?
My background had taught me a lot about the self-managed creative life. I had always been happiest working alone on my own ideas and I realised that the only way to pursue that was in my own workshop. This developed over a period of about 10 years when I divided my time between teaching part-time and my own, initially, very small and basic workshops. Eventually I went full time as a maker in 1990 and moved to a bigger workshop in a converted 17th-century farm complex in south Oxfordshire.
What inspires you and where do you get your ideas from?
At college I was fascinated by the Arts and Crafts Movement and an excellent collection in a museum in Leicester was one of my haunts. I also discovered the work and spirituality of the Shakers, which had a deep and lasting impact on me. I visited an exhibition of the Devon Guild of Craftsmen (now MAKE Southwest) in the early 1980s and was instantly impressed by Alan Peters’ work. I became a regular visitor to the Crafts Council in London, where many of the then very few, furniture makers were showing their work. I bought A Cabinetmakers’ Notebook by James Krenov there and couldn’t put it down.
Tell us about your main stylistic influences.
While the Arts and Crafts Movement interested me, I was keen to study original vernacular work and spent as much time in museums and antique shops as in contemporary galleries. During my early years of working, I was as interested in the style of the making as the design. My making was sometimes deliberately rough, sometimes very refined, all a process of discovery and finding my level. I was particularly interested in how vernacular wooden furniture could stand up to centuries of constant use and seem to improve with age. This is something I have always wanted to build into my work.
Is there an ethos or a guiding principle behind your style?
Objects made to last for several generations using sustainably managed materials and low tech methods are all part of the ethos. I think small furniture workshops can take some credit for having been ahead of the curve on environmental issues. So I came to describe my work as contemporary vernacular. My design training was geared to commercial production, where there was no room for superfluous decoration, unnecessary constructional elements or sentiment. Everything about the design needed to be there for a reason.
What type of tools do you like to use and why?
Minimalism seems embedded in me! I like my tools to be strictly necessary and appropriate so have always bought small but solid freestanding machines. My hand tool collection is both minimal and high quality: lots of Lie-Nielsen and Veritas. They look like they are used every day, which they are.
Tell us about your workshop.
I have been based down a country lane near the village of Bramley in Hampshire, about six miles north of Basingstoke, for nearly two decades. Having rented for many years, I found a new development of small modern workshops which were being sold freehold. Thanks to my family and a substantial business mortgage, I was able to purchase my own workshop in 2004. My workshops have been through various iterations and for many years my current space was fully equipped with all the standard stuff: sliding tablesaw bench, bandsaw, planer thicknesser, mortiser, spindle moulder, industrial sanders, linisher, lathe and extraction. Whatever one’s romantic preferences, having a growing family to support forces a healthy degree of pragmatism!
For three years from September 2018 I was the full-time course leader of the furniture-making programme at the Boat Building Academy in Lyme Regis. This intense but valuable time affected my approach to making when I came back to it full time in September 2021. I wanted to focus on chair making and small commissions and to develop more of a studio feel. Now I have a much simpler set-up. My bench is the focal point of the process. All my hand tools are housed in a chest which keeps them handy, safe and clean.
How does your design process work?
I was always keen to develop a recognisable voice and created a palette of constructional and design motifs which could be applied to a wide range of requirements. These gradually changed and evolved with time. One advantage of this is creating an efficient way of producing one-off pieces that can be accurately costed. New designs start with scale drawings and either maquettes or, in the case of chairs, full-size mock-ups.
Which woods do you most like working with?
I love coarse-grained British timbers: ash, oak, elm, chestnut. I have found some amazing brown oak and olive ash for specific projects. Occasionally some really wild elm has been used for rocking chairs. These woods are particularly appropriate to my work.
Do you work with other materials as well?
If other materials such as glass, metal or fabrics are used I will contract that out but keep a very tight rein on the design. My time at Leicester was multi-disciplinary so I have a working knowledge of upholstery, glass, plastics and metals, which is useful.
What sort of finishes do you prefer?
I intensely dislike the physical process of spraying and have always preferred hand-applied finishes. Polyurethane and Danish oil was a standard finish for many years, but I am now a convert to Osmo, which is a great product. For light-coloured woods I use clear acrylic varnish.
What is your favourite project you have worked on?
Whether they can be called projects or not I don’t know, but I have had a handful of amazing clients who have commissioned a lot of work and created complete interiors, often over many years. This has always been a sustained and very rich process.
What is the most challenging project you have worked on?
I have been involved in a number of projects for public spaces such as galleries, churches and chapels. Working with other people in these situations can be challenging, but knowing that pieces are being seen and used every day by hundreds of people is particularly satisfying.
Do you prefer working on commissions or your own collection?
The boundaries between commissions and my own collection are rather blurred because my commissioned work is quite distinctively me anyway. My own stock designs now are exclusively chairs, but I do still enjoy the challenges and variety of commissions. I would like to develop more as a chair maker. Over the past two years between a third and a half has been chairs and seating, the rest commissions.
What are you working on now and next?
I have just completed a revised series of chair designs, five in all, which cover a range from a small occasional chair through to my signature rocking chair. This represents a substantial body of work, since chair design is a particularly demanding aspect of furniture design. These will be shown at exhibitions in the coming months and will then go to galleries. I am currently working on a large oak dining table commission and have just delivered the first of a set of possibly six small bookcases.
Where do you see your work going in the future?
The studio approach works particularly well for my current chairs. They are a departure in that they are not, as earlier work was, dependent on efficient machine making. There is a lot of hand work in all five chairs, which is challenging and extending my skills. I am now working in a far less formal way and connecting with what I am doing more mindfully with a less structured working day. I know roughly how much money I need to make each month to be viable, but am less focused on business and more on a spiritual connection.
What do you do when you are not working?
I spend time with my daughters whenever I can. Both of them are developing careers as environmentalists. I make and play mandolins, purely for the fun of it. I play in a barn dance band, a folk trio and solo spots at open mic sessions. We have all been playing together for a long time and it is a healthy balance to solitary making. Painting watercolours is an extension of my design skills and I am slowly honing that. If and when eventually I can no longer physically manage furniture making, I will develop it more seriously.
mark-ripley.com @markripleyfurniture
