I wrote an article on Brian Boggs, chairmaker, in the Magazine‘s November 2012 issue. This special 200th anniversary issue celebrates some of the most talented makers today. In doing so I spent a day in Brians shop and gallery in the Biltmore Village in Asheville, North Carolina, where we talked about everything from his first forays into chairmaking to his new business venture, the Boggs Collective, wherein Brian partners in a number of different ways with various furniture and cabinet makers. Brian is always a thoughtful and eloquent woodworker. Brian’s thoughts on design were very interesting to me as a chairmaker and furniture designer. I won’t attempt to sum up his thoughts here. Instead, let Brian speak for himself.
First, I draw a gesture. This is a rough sketch that you use to try and capture movement and proportions. It’s important to grasp the idea. And I generally go from there to kind of a wooden gesture form. My first mockups look like a wooden gesture drawing. These are just an idea.
Now I dont need to experiment. The comfort of the chair is what I love and it’s something I can easily transfer. These are all numbers. Theyre angles and curves but theyre numbers and theyre numbers that I know and I can always repeat them. No matter how the chair is constructed I preserve that form. Thats not an experiment. Thats the design process I build around. A seat to back angle is what I use. The seat, back, and the floor are three lines that are constant. These lines can be drawn with a pencil and covered with vellum. This is really helpful as it allows me gesture draw around them. Once I have the proportions correct, I can play around with visual form.
And then I think about the movement of the piece. I say think about . . . . It’s not the right word, because I believe design at its best can be downloaded for free. This is not the thinking that comes from us, it’s just an inspiration that you can download. And I think that people that are really good at it, creative people, theyve just opened up the channel that allows the download to happen. The more you think, analyze, and left-brain your way through something, the harder it is to get in the way. It is hard to be creative and not hinder the creative process. This is just an opening to listen to what’s happening. Something is always trying to happen. Some design always seems like its looking for a place to be born and if were open to it then something cool can happen, so thats what the gesture drawing is really helpful at just opening things without restricting anything, to allow a movement to happen. It’s similar to writers block. You can just start writing whatever you want, even if it doesn’t make sense. It needs to be primed with something. Although it might seem like junk, gesture drawing can be used to prime the pump and give it a place. You just have to keep at it. It eventually starts to form, and then I see the structure that is necessary to support the movement.
I want to capture an emotion with a new design. This is what creative endeavors, whether they are writing, painting, or woodworking, have in common. Its to express, sometimes its to express an idea, an intellectual idea, but certainly artistic stuff, you know writing a novel. You want to be able to have the emotion of that thing or connect with the viewer or the sitter, you want to connect to them in a way that they feel somewhat enriched, at least I do, and that cant be thought through very much, that has to be felt. As I draw a piece, I feel it. Then I take it to the drawing table to help me design it. I also use gesture drawings to show where it will be supported structurally. Then, how to design the joint is similar to that but it also involves a lot more left brain engineering, thinking about solutions and building on what you have learned. You can add a thread to a project that’s in a different direction. You know, adding a router to a woodworking shop that only had a chisel already opens up a and actually the router has been absolutely key to my ability to design freely because a router can travel in any direction that you can imagine guiding it and it can cut any shape or angle or whatever that you can imagine guiding it to cut.
I wasnt going to get into this and maybe its not accessible, But I have a natural tendency to merge with what Im working with. So, for example. It’s like a meditation. I will just stare at the mockup and let it go. And what needs to happen just shows up. And so design, as much as anything else, for me, is just a matter of get the hell out of the way and let it happen. Because it is trying to happen. I’m not going to make it occur. Im just going to make myself available to something that is trying to happen and whether thats a reality or a perception it does change the game a lot in that I am softening and allowing something to have a life of its own rather than enforcing my structural sense onto something from an egoic standpoint.
I think the designs have a much more sensitive and sensual feeling about them from across the room than they would otherwise. Designers should design so that people feel something when they walk into the room. And if you dont feel something, theres something missing. And maybe its the person, some people are just not very sensitive. But I want my work to connect with people and if Im not paying attention to it, listening to it, and letting it be created then there is no hope of it being able to connect with anybody else. This is not a process, but an essential element of how I design. It’s just something I have observed over the years.
Check out Brian Boggs’ DVDs to see more.
