Written By:
David Trubridge
Wood.
You could say that wood has been one of the most important things in my life. Through what it offered, I am what I am now. For 35 years I have worked it, thought about it and designed for it. It is the most wonderful material and I am eternally grateful for the riches it has taught me.
I remember clearly one early defining moment. I was starting to make some wooden bowls and furniture while at the same time working part-time as a forester on a small estate in northern England. The old Geordie, with whom I worked, was aware I needed timber and said he knew of a fallen oak tree that should be ‘well seasoned.’ One weekend we borrowed a farmer’s tractor and trailer and drove to the estate’s broadleaf woodlands. When he showed me the trunk I stared aghast at a mossy lump sprouting fungus and ferns. At the sawmill we manoeuvred this piece of the forest floor onto an old rack sawbench, and wound the handle. As the trunk rolled through the giant, unguarded, spinning blade it peeled into two halves and revealed the rich, perfectly preserved grain inside, filling the shed with oily oak perfume. I buried my nose in the shavings and traced the patterns of medullary rays with my finger
This was the acute point of connection between the forests and nature that I loved, and the furniture that I was starting to make. And I think it begins to explain the way in which every culture uses and values wood. It is a living material. It is not a melange of processed chemicals squirted out, at extreme temperature, into a man-made mould. It has a life of its own, growing as light, soil and rainfall direct. Its life structure has evolved over millions of years in the finely tuned, mutually interdependent, forest ecosystem. In using it we bring some of that quality of the natural world into our homes.
You can lie in bed, gazing dreamily at the panelled ceiling, seeing the knot of a branch broken off in some far distant storm, or fantasise patterns of whirling mythical creatures, embedded from the beginnings of time.
Wood has no class distinctions. It can be worked by the finest craftsmanship into articles of extreme beauty and value that will be prized for generations. Or it can be roughly hewn into fences and packing crates. You can build bridges with it, or toothpicks.
Throughout my life I have continued to make, and later design, furniture and lighting out of wood, because of these qualities and because it is what I know intimately. I have explored every way of working it from early massive tables to the lightest of skin structures. The care of the craftsman has taught me to respect it and use it to the utmost. I find it painful to discard and instinctively will spend far more time than it is worth trying to use every piece to its maximum. This seems a common trait amongst woodworkers. My use of wood has also recently earned me the label of an eco-designer in Europe. This is not because I have sought it or used the term myself, but I think because there is a perception that wood is itself a natural, hence ‘eco’ material. Is this valid?
I will never claim any material is ‘eco’ because I think it is a word that has lost all currency thanks to greenwashing. It has been used indiscriminately to justify consumer business as usual, claiming a product to be ‘eco’ because of some minor bonus, despite every other, conveniently ignored, harmful quality. I have no illusions that anything we produce, in wood or any other material, can be truly sustainable. So we just try to do the best we can.
We are in a time of immense upheaval, when everything in the developed world that has been taken for granted, is now being questioned and re-evaluated. Many of our choices are based on aesthetics which have evolved over centuries, and are remarkably similar across cultures. It is very hard to go against these deeply held feelings, but if we are to have any hope of combating the very serious threat of global warming and over-consumption, then this is what we must do. And we must do it to wood.
It is not enough to say that wood is an ‘eco-material’ just because it is natural, however we might aesthetically prefer its qualities. It is the designer’s duty to do a rigorous life-cycle analysis of all materials available, and choose that which has the least negative impact on the environment. Then you can say, with verifiable figures to back you up, that the material you have chosen is the best. My business is doing this now.
Under these terms I suspect it may turn out that wood is more detrimental than plastic, once you have accounted for all the oil used to plant, fell, extract and process the timber, and ship it to our workshop. Then there is the waste that cannot be reused, the finishes and synthetic glues, and finally the fact that most of the carbon stored in the wood will revert to the atmosphere fairly soon. You can’t recycle most wood offcuts. In comparison, oil based plastic, once formed, can in theory (we are not quite there yet) with all its waste, be used forever!
This could be where we have to adjust our aesthetics and emotional choices. But then how do we account for the spiritually nourishing aspect of wood, or the important connection it provides with nature in a world where nature is abused and taken for granted? It’s a hard equation, but I expect large scale manufacturing in wood to become increasingly untenable as regulations require greater restrictions on carbon output, and precious forests can no longer be squandered. While small scale craft production will increase, where a few, carefully selected trees are processed and used locally like my Northumbrian oak.