This post is part of a series revealing the table of contents of upcoming Issue Twenty-One. As is our custom, we’ll be discussing one article per weekday in order to give you a taste of what is to come.
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Mike Epworth – “Displaced: Folk Furniture’s Connection to Place, People, & Time”
“Where in the world does this stuff come from?” In Issue Twenty-One, woodworker and author Mike Epworth argues that place is one of the most important, though often neglected aspects of any furniture’s history. Where these objects were created, who these makers were, and what geographical or economic constraints they were working under are vital parts of understanding the why of an object.
In instances where folk furniture has been displaced from its context and hastily shuttled into an art market that is simply looking to profit, these pieces have become orphans with no known parentage. They carry with them nothing of their hometown or the people who made and used them. Some of the less scrupulous dealers have even invented whimsical names for certain forms of these pieces in order to invoke the folksy charm that drives prices high. Australia’s “Cootamundra Jack” chair is one such example: a term claimed to have been coined by a certain dealer in the 1970s. “The chairs are likely not from Cootamundra, nor made by anyone named Jack,” Epworth explains.
In this article, Epworth argues that such artifact dislocation brings us perilously close to erasing any historical meaning these objects might have. He surveys several examples of objects that have already been extracted from regional cultures and offers his informed speculations as to their origins. He also writes a warning, though: we must ensure that other cultural works remain tethered to their home contexts or their stories too will vanish. Perhaps most surprisingly, Epworth even has a warning to today’s hand-tool woodworkers: in our enthusiasm for vernacular handcraft, we should be careful to avoid the error of previous generations who stripped these crafts of their uniqueness in their centralized training centers and standardized methodology. No. Handcraft is too unique, too personal for anyone to flatten or homogenize. Epworth spurs us to action: “We need to bring place back into our sharing and preserving of vernacular skills. Students need to be able to see how these traditions sprang from the local cultures, materials, and landscapes of the regions.”
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