Turning Trend - Ontology Recapitulates Phylogeny - In Reverse?
In Biology, there was a theory that all organisms, as they developed from conception to viability, along the way, exhibit a characteristic of a lower Phylum - ontology recapitulating phylogeny. From my sophomore biology class the Phylum start with single cell animals, Protozoas, and progress to Chordata - having a central nerve core and spine.
Recent trends in woodturning seem to indicate that this theory applies in reverse - Phylogenic Regression. Think about it. From chunk of wood to ?board? to ?plate? to ?bowel? to ?vessel? to ?hollow form? - from raw material to more and more functional, specialized wooden objects.
This process appears to have begun with attempts to turn ?hollow forms? from perhaps the most interesting wood - burl. Burl, unlike woods from other parts of a tree, is heterogenous, having grain running every which way and often with voids and inclusions - bark, dirt, rocks, etc.. Some turner was, no doubt, almost finished making a beautiful ?hollow form? and just had to make that one last ?finishing cut? - which happened to expose a void, or rock, or bark inclusion, destroying what was an almost perfectly smooth exterior surface.
Rather than kiss off what was otherwise a beautiful turned piece, he/she mixed up some sawdust with glue, plugged the flaw and sanded things back to smooth and shiny. No one, except a very discerning fellow turner would every notice the subtle fix.
At some point, a turner chose an exceptional piece of wood full of voids and inclusions - too many to hide with sawdust and glue. But the shape of the piece was just too nice to kiss off - and the flaws were kind of interesting, making the piece stand out from it?s less perfectly shaped bretheren.
?To hell with the flaws - this piece is a Keeper!? said the turner and placed it in a prominent location in the house - for all to see - and appreciate.
Again, biology comes in to play - birds of a feather flock together after all. A turner friend sees the piece and finds that what would normally be thought of as fatal flaws are, in fact, enhancing the interest level of the piece. So he goes home, gets out a decent, but not outstanding, piece - and ?creates? ?flaws? in it. This including obvious wood flaws thing has possibilities! And what had been crappy wood, good only for the fireplace, becomes sought after - special. Piercing becomes the rage.
Now is often the case, a turner begins roughing a blank and at some point in the turning, notices that if he/she had selected a different turning axis, a discovered while turning grain patterns or color would kick up the interest level in the piece a few notches. So the piece is recentered to exploit that possibility. As the turning resumes it soon becomes obvious that, in order to keep that interesting feature, the piece will be asymetric (you have turned through the interesting wood while regaining a symetric outline - right?)
Again, the obviously flawed piece would have gone to the Burn Pile. But again, the piece is otherwise really quite nice. So it escapes the fire and becomes a Keeper, so good as to become a display piece - in the house.
Over the decades this process reooccurs - with ever more variations.
Now some where in the distant past, well before the invention of stone tools, some ancient ancestor discovered that charred wood was easier to remove than sound wood. If you had a chunk of wood and wanted a depression in it to hold ?stuff? you could place a hot coal on it where you wanted a depression, let it burn and char the piece, then, once it?d cooled, scrape out the charred wood - with a stick. After repeating the process several times a concave hemisphere could be produced in an otherwise good piece of wood, creating a nice place to keep stuff that was difficult to contain otherwise.
Eventually, this char and scrape method was applied to the ?outside? of the chunk of wood, thus making the ?container? lighter and more easily transported. The Bowl Was Born.
Now think about some of the turnings appearing in woodturning magazines and in galleries. Notice the fascination with ?negative space/ the presence of abscense?? Notice all the ?texturing? - sandblasting, wire brushing, piercing and carving - charring? Notice the ever increasing lack of single axis symetry? Notice the use of stains and dyes - and PAINT - to make an otherwise bland wood look what had previously been called ?punky wood??
Is turning progressing - or regressing - or is it aspring to become - ART!?
Just asking.
charlie b