The New Craftsmen's latest collection showcases the work of Orkney furniture maker Kevin Gauld
Tucked away at the top of the Victoria and Albert Museum is its vast furniture collection. There you will find Chippendale cabinets, twentieth-century gems by Eileen Gray, Peter Ghyczy's futuristic 'Garden Egg' chair, and a simple wood and straw design with rather humbler origins: an Orkney chair made in the 1890s by David Kirkness, one of the prominent makers of the period and the man credited with commercialising this vernacular tradition.
Orkney is an archipelago of 70 islands and skerries located six miles from the north-eastern tip of the Scottish mainland. Buffeted by Atlantic and North Sea winds, it offers a merciless environment for trees to grow in, and so crofters would use driftwood, often from shipwrecks, to construct their chairs. Short legs kept the sitter low to the ground so as to avoid sooty air rising from peat fires; a high, straw back provided protection from icy draughts; and a drawer was added in which the man of the house would keep his possessions - be it a Bible or a bottle of whisky. Over the years, the design has become standardised and sold around the world as a sought-after artefact steeped in the nostalgia of rural life and the desolate beauty of Orkney.
Today, Kevin Gauld works under the guise of The Orkney Furniture Maker. Having left school at 16, he was apprenticed to a local craftsman, where he cut his teeth on stools and tables before learning how to make Orkney chairs. Kevin set up on his own in 2007, aged 26, and now operates out of a workshop overlooking Kirkwall Bay. 'This chair is much more than just a piece of furniture,' he explains. 'It is a piece of history telling a story of Orkney life and the people who live on the islands.' It was this sense of culture and place, and commitment to materials and method, that drew Catherine Lock of The New Craftsmen to Kevin's workshop. Established in 2012, The New Craftsmen is a network of makers and innovators who use traditional skills in a modern way.
With this in mind, Kevin and London-based furniture designer Gareth Neal were charged with the task of reimagining the Orkney chair in The New Craftsmen's first major collaboration. Gareth came up with the design - combining elements of the Windsor chair's design with the Orkney's straw back - and Kevin used his well-honed skills to make it. And so, the 'Brodgar' chair and bench were born, named after the Ring of Brodgar, a Neolithic stone circle on west Orkney.
The summer months on this remote atoll are known as the 'simmer dim'; the sun only dips below the horizon for a few hours, bringing with it 'white nights' and long days. These are perfect conditions for Kevin's oats, which he plants in April to grow and ripen until late September, when they are hand-cut with a scythe, bundled into sheaves and 'stooked' up against each other in the field to dry.
The loose outer leaves are removed so that only the clean, golden straw remains; this is a painstaking process that is done by hand, strand by strand. The first bundle of straw is nailed horizontally on to the back of the seat to form a continuous rope; the straw is then built up row by row, each bound by sisal string and sewn to the row below. The top edge is finished with a line of tight stitching. Once the chair back is built, it is clipped to remove any loose bits of straw and then, slightly alarmingly, blowtorched to tidy it up. The remarkable thing about this design is that there is no internal structure providing support - the strength of the woven straw is enough to form a solid back that, over time, will meld to the sitter's shape.
It's a labour-intensive process that can take up to 45 hours - a demanding reality that goes some way towards explaining the threat to this tradition. And yet, just as David Kirkness distributed the Orkney chair far and wide, Kevin, Gareth and The New Craftsmen are reinvigorating this folk tradition - and by combining contemporary design and artisan techniques, they may just keep extinction at bay.
The New Craftsmen's Orkney Collection has launched at the London Design Festival 2019, and includes work by Kevin Gauld and many other Orkney makers. You can buy the collection and see the exhibition Portrait of Place: Orkney, at their Mayfair showroom, 34 N Row, Mayfair, London W1K 6DG.
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