Design Approaches - Start With A Blank Slate - Or ...?
One approach to coming up with designs for turnings is to look at many pieces as possible - photos, drawings, hands on - then pick a style or an aggregate of styles that appeals to you and start turning your versions.
Another approach is basically the application of western classical proportions - derived, unfortunately, mainly from Greek architecture - lots of geometry and layout lines. The wood is merely the medium for creating The Ideal Form.
The Form Follows Function Approach - a vase for a long stemmed rose - tall and narrow, with most of the weight as low as possible. The wood should not detract from the rose(s).
The cousin of The Form Follows Function approach is the "I Have This Slick Tool Which Does _____" and it's non-identical twin "I'm Really Good With This (skew, spindle gouge, skewgie, Ellsworth Grind) Tool."
- Tooling Determines the Piece
Some come at design from "It looks like it's made of (leather, metal, ceramic, stone) - but it's WOOD!". I see Turned Wood Cowboy Hats and all Segmented Turned Pieces in this "school". We use to call this sort of thing Mind F*CK - just screwing with your head - man.
Then there's the Mixed Media Approach - "If you look hard enough you'll eventually find the wood in this piece, amongst the gold and silver leaf, the titanium wires, chemical and paint patination and the ground stone and epoxy and mother of pearl inlay.".
The current D'jour Design Approach seems to be heavy on "texturing" - chatter tools, carving tools and grinding tools ads everywhere. At some point, someone will discover the pipe maker's Coral Cutting Machine (two flat spear point "drills", set about 20 degrees apart which rotate and alternate making contact with the wood - distance between contact points can be varied) and "coral" texturing will become the rage.
The What The Hell Is It approach sets out to create things in wood which a) don't look like anything anyone's ever seen before and b) selects wood that'll allow the making of some or all of the components of the piece. A ?Winged Vessel? is an example of this type of thing
Being formally trained as an engineer, I find the How In The Hell Did He/She Make That approach interesting. Escoulen's asymetric and eccentric turned pieces facinate me. These are the pieces that sometimes keep me awake for a day or so working out how they were probably done.
I personally lean heavily towards ?I wonder what?s hiding in this chunk of wood??. I just turned a series of small lidded boxes from an old split rail cedar fence post. Under the rough gray surface, below thirty years of dirt and grime
- tight straight grain. Perfect for aligning the lid to the base of a turned box. This approach often ends with nothing left to turn and a floor covered a foot deep in curlies and chips. Alas, large quantities of horse manure do not always mean there?s a pony somewhere close by, if not within the pile. But I?ve found a lot of ponies and the rest makes good composting material and kindling.
So what approach do you take when it?s for a piece just for you?
charlie b