Furniture makers are a solitary "group" of people. We tend to work alone or with a small crew of assistants. We also, within the craft community, are the most diverse in terms of the media we work in. We are not defined by our materials or processes, but by the function of our work. When we show, we compete for the same limited customer base in a difficult market. Given this context, furniture makers tend to feel isolated and at odds.
One of the purposes of The Furniture Society is to help studio furniture makers of all stripes to move toward a sense of community. This will be achieved in a variety of ways. The most dramatic will be The Furniture Society conference. In bringing together furniture makers who work in all media-wood, metal, glass, ceramics, leather, and other mixed media-we will become more conscious of what we have in common and what we can share. From practical concerns for production and marketing to those more philosophical issues like artistic expression and our role in society, there's a lot we can learn from one another. Tricks and insights obvious to one can be valuable revelations to others.
It's important to look beyond our immediate concerns, addressing ideas not associated with how to make or sell more furniture. One of the things that crafts, in general, bring to late-twentieth-century society is a mode of life alternative to the corporate model. We are not mass-producers; we are craftspeople and small entrepreneurs, controlling the patterns and rhythms of our own lives in ways that most people never get to do. Living a life of creative problem-solving is palpably different than most people experience in their day-to-day lives. We work with our hands in direct physical involvement with our materials to bring to life products that are the manifestation of our personal visions.
We are a kind of role model in this country. We demonstrate an active caring about quality of life in our work, and people take that home in our products. We need to point out to the world that we are. We need to celebrate the quality of our lives and what we bring to the greater society. We are a reference point of what is possible as an alternative to the corporate/technological world we live in. We do not reject technology. We use it, some more than others, as a tool to increase life's quality. We also need to show that we embrace our contemporary world as craftspeople and furniture makers. We are not trying to look back in time. We are crucial to our culture's health. We need to talk about these things among ourselves at our conference and in our publications.
An awareness of a shared consciousness is a starting point in the building of community. Community forms when people struggle together, work together, and (definitely not least important) play together. The conference will be a lot of work to put together, but it ought to be fun to attend. Making serial furniture, on a sort of tag-team basis, might be a start. How about a softball game with bats made by furniture makers who are also turners? The bats could be made to be decorative as well as usable and even be displayed at the conference. That could even be a theme of a small exhibition: "BATS-out of wood, metal, glass, clay, and leather, cardboard." How about gloves, balls, caps? We might think of other games that we can play that do not involve making furniture at the conference which do involve our craft abilities-handmade Frisbees, relay races (theme?), the "Furniture Olympics!" What ideas might you contribute?
Making the conference fun, particularly in surprising and unpredictable ways, can be a tremendous tool in building community. When people play together, get down and dirty, and just plain silly, interpersonal barriers break down, people recognize what they have in common, friendships get made. It's as if we don't have fun just for the fun of it; but to cultivate our humanity. While the conference will be our principal thrust in the coming months, we might try to develop some playful things to do outside of that context. As we start to put a regular newsletter together, we might have a column for things like humorous client stories and contests (that do not involve furniture competitions) of a whimsical nature.
The more we develop a sense of community, and our members take that shared consciousness out into the world and to other furniture makers, the more we, The Furniture Society, grow. We are a new organization. The more we are able to engender a quality of community within our membership, the faster we will bring in new members and expand our capabilities.
