Taking Carpentry Seriously
- Jeremy Broun
- Jul 4
- 2 min read
Updated: Jul 5
In 1966 John Cleese in his 'Schoolmaster' sketch said 'Welcome back to school boys, now this year I want carpentry to be taken more seriously. in fact I want the gymnasium finished by Easter'.
Wow, haven't we come far today! In my day being good at woodwork at school meant you were stupid and paradoxically today getting your hands dirty at school is still looked down upon, yet out there in the adult professional world being a furniture designer maker is the stuff of high status second career professionals including ex city bankers and marketing executives!
Not taking carpentry or woodworking seriously is also about not taking oneself too seriously.
A magazine editor more recently wrote that many woodworkers today consider Jeremy Broun to be a router maverick. But hang on, I was the guy who wrote the pioneer book (The Incredible Router in 1989) and established the rules that I thought mavericks are supposed to break! There were no rules then because the router was a tool that was used for cutting grooves, rebates and profiling edges! I discovered the tool could do virtually any woodworking task and even offer precision that traditional hand methos could not achieve, not to mention open up a new vocabulary of joints!
For most of my furniture making career I was considered to be at least a decade before my time, promoted as the designer maker to emulate back in the early 1990s (eg. The Guild of Master Craftsmen Publications Careers Guide) and designing low cost simple items even before Ikea arrived in the UK. And then suddenly in this online revolution one is perceived as 'old school' (with a bit of fresh thinking thrown in)!
It does worry me though that furniture making (which I refer to as 'The Art of Carpentry' in my hardback book) is becoming increasingly expensive for anyone wanting to start up. Workshop space can be expensive to rent and you need a lot of tools even before you decide to commit yoyrself. Or do you? Watch this space for Lowcost entry to woodworking!
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