On Thu, 02 Jun 2005 11:28:22 +0100, Andy Dingley
babbled like a waterfall and said:

It's plug ugly, made from nasty wood ?

I admit I've made some of this stuff myself, but I don't _like_ this
"timber brutalist" styling - even as bar fitting or lofts. We're so
divorced from decent timber these days that we've forgotten what good
furniture looks like. A bit of plasticy veneer from Ikea passes as
"wood" and the horror that is "naughty pine" gets passed off as an
antique. Then we see recycled outdoor timbers pretending to be quality
cabinetry, sealed under a layer of sprayed lacquer to keep the smell and
the oils in. I make _timber_framing_ that's more like cabinetry than
this stuff. Get yourself to bath, or somewhere else with decent
galleries full of 18th century work, and take a look at real
craftsmanship in the best of materials.

(and yes, I've looked _very_ closely at Jarabosky's work in Camden)

There was one of those recycling in the home type shows on last year
and they were going around showing what people had done.

One woman lived on the shore and collected driftwood. I have seen some
stunning art made from this stuff. This woman made her kitchen
cupboard doors from it. The turnip doing the show was purring about
the stunning use of the wood for the doors. They were the raw
driftwood tied together to roughly fill the carcase fronts. No attempt
appeared to have been made to work them or even to get them to fit.
They were what a 5 year old would make a "den" out of and looked like
that. I wonder they didn't get put up for the Turner Prize.

I worried for months about being so far out of touch with art. Then I
realised they were both turnips and felt better.