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<\/p>\nTwo of my repeat clients are Harvey Nichols and Selfridges. If you walk past either of these stores in London, Bristol, Manchester, Leeds or Edinburgh and there\u2019s something that looks a bit curvy and it\u2019s wood, the chances are that we\u2019ve done it. Harvey Nichols tours the installations around its stores. My thinking with commissions is that they are all for things that will exist anyway, so if I pitch for that work and get it then I will produce it in a more low-energy, sustainable, eco-friendly way and also explore my practice creatively. I was at Chelsea flower show this year and have installations in Japan, Singapore, China and the US. Locally I have two sculptures in Grizedale Forest: \u2018Together\u2019 and \u2018Mountains we Made\u2019.<\/p>\n
My older brother Joss began training as an artistic blacksmith and set up a workshop. I was at architecture school but had become frustrated by how hypothetical it was. I\u2019d not done any making before and when I went and helped him, I thought, \u2018Wow!\u2019 You have an idea in the morning and by the afternoon you can have made something decent and useful. So, I quit architecture and did a two-year furniture course at Rycotewood, where a furniture designer called David Colwell who did steambending gave a talk. When I tried it, for me, what came out of the steam chamber was just a hot plastic material. I saw that I could do in wood what I\u2019d been doing in metal with my brother. My sketchbook was full of metalwork designs and I\u2019ve got a really organic, curvy style so it was natural for me to explore that.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve always been really interested in materials. If you know a material in an intimate way, then you can do the best you possibly can with it. I\u2019ve worked with ceramics as well as lots of high-performance materials including Kevlar, but by the time I had finished at college I was thinking about sustainability and decided that if you want to make contemporary work it has to respond to the contemporary context of the world. When everything was taken into consideration \u2013 ecology, the way it performed \u2013 steam-bending greenwood was still the best option, and people love it.<\/p>\n
If you use locally sourced green wood, you know the tree\u2019s going to be replaced and you\u2019re not transporting it anywhere, so the carbon footprint is kept to a minimum. I love a streamlined solution. I keep going back to steam bending because it\u2019s such a good process. If I am going to make things \u2013 and I probably shouldn\u2019t \u2013 then this is a good way to go.<\/p>\n
I was down at the London design festival and there were climate protests going on outside and no one was talking about sustainability at the festival. I don\u2019t get it. I was in a room with two or three hundred designer-makers, everyone selling fancy things for your home. Still, everyone\u2019s poor and just needs money, I suppose. And rather than getting something that\u2019s a bit crusty and eco-looking, the customer will still go for something made of metal and paint.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Left image: Plankton | Middle image: Witherslack Knot | Right image: Trees for Buildings<\/p>\n
My son Casper\u2019s mum and I travelled to eighteen countries when we first met. Then, when we got back, I had two weeks before I had to start my first Harvey Nichols commission. So, we got the van out and went to the Lake District. I\u2019d never been here before and I thought, \u2018I\u2019ve seen the world and all along this was in England.\u2019 I\u2019m from Dorset originally and we\u2019d never been north. It was so nice. I couldn\u2019t believe it. So, we decided to stay for six months and found the house next door to this workshop. Then, completely randomly, the next-door neighbour was about to put this barn on the market. I took it for a workshop and we never left.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m a designer\u2013maker and I\u2019m an artist. When I was in London recently I described myself as an artist, so that people knew I made sculptures and non-functional things. I think for designers it\u2019s often more like a job than a passion or calling. When I first started, I thought that all designers were obsessed but they\u2019re not. I think I\u2019m quite an obsessive person. I think I\u2019d rather be thought of as an artist than a designer\u2013maker because I have a reason or narrative behind why I make a piece of work in a particular way.<\/p>\n
Yes, there\u2019s a walker\u2019s caf\u00e9 downstairs and some children with special needs from Kendal used to turn up in a minibus twice a year and want to know what I was working on. So, I\u2019d show them around and then they\u2019d want to make something too. I then got funding to make stuff with them and one of the products available on the website is exclusive to them or community groups. Now I hang out with them every week. This feels relevant.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s always the last thing. I\u2019ve gone back to product design, which is where I started. Every year we had an open weekend where other makers or anyone can come along and I shared all my secrets. Then we started doing one-day courses. It evolved into the beginners\u2019 steambending course. In the morning we take you into the woods and explain about how trees grow and what trees are and how steam-bending works, the ecology and why I choose it over other processes. Then we come back and bend ten different species of wood and we do a wide range of stuff which takes us through to lunchtime. And then at the end of the day they make something \u2013 a full-on product to take home. By the beginning of this year, people were actually making nice lampshades. I never intended for that to happen \u2013 I just wanted to teach them about the process. I\u2019m proud of it because people are really happy<\/p>\n
Honestly, when they go home, they\u2019ve learned loads and they go home with something. And they hang a lampshade in their kitchen and they\u2019re going to keep that forever. I still get emails from two years ago, and they send me a picture of their lampshade and it may not have the best finish, but they say \u2018I love it. I look at it every day,\u2019 and the reason they love it is that they made it themselves.<\/p>\n
charliewhinney.com<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Charlie Whinney Q&A in the Lake District. Visit with Lakelovers and learn more about General in the Lakes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":74,"featured_media":1025,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lakelovers.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lakelovers.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lakelovers.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lakelovers.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/74"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lakelovers.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1024"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lakelovers.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1024\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9334,"href":"https:\/\/www.lakelovers.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1024\/revisions\/9334"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lakelovers.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lakelovers.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lakelovers.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lakelovers.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}