
I arrived at Rycotewood on the morning of the 7th of June where my friend Faith welcomed me, nostalgia was making me nervous, so I was pleased to be greeted by her, Faith and I joined Rycotewood as students at the same time, and 10 years on she is now teaching the city and guilds students on the same course that we studied together all those years ago. She took me into the building and down the corridors towards the computer room where students do their designing, the hallways had a familiar tone, and the building smelt like DeJa’Vu. We turned the corner to find two of the teaching staff among a fold of chairs, the design suite was filled to the brim and difficult to navigate, chairs occupying every square inch of the room. Drew Smith and Dr. Lynn Jones had trapped themselves in, each with a folder in hand, busy marking they looked up to greet me.
These chairs are the result of the 2nd year students’ work, a project brief to design and make a chair as their main module of the year. It felt like I had stepped back in time and I was back in Uni revising designs with Drew (the head of course and design tutor) but this time we were talking as friends rather than student and teacher, we chatted about the variation and scale of the work that stood before us, the chairs were all different and you could see a personality in each one. I started studying the chairs, it’s hard not to when you find yourself surrounded by newly designed furniture unseen to the outside world, Drew kindly made some time out of his busy schedule and took me on a tour of the building.
Rycotewood school of furniture is a long-standing vanguard of woodwork and furniture education. Holding high standards in design and quality of fine craftsmanship, its alumni is extensive and impressive; Simon Pengelly, Matthew Burt, Charley Whinney, Peter Lanyon to name a few. Originated in Hi Wycombe, in 1938, it now occupies a space at the city of Oxford college campus in the centre of town. It is one of the last standing schools in the country where you can go to study furniture design/making exclusively, others around Britain have been amalgamated or absolved in recent years due to an unhealthy dose of austerity measures, there are private schools, but Rycotewood is a state school, the last of its kind. It’s a place where the vocational art of furniture-making meets the contemporary skills of design, in impressive shared workshops students are encouraged to treat the experience like a 9-5 job, 5 days a week. Peer review and learning happen constantly in a shared workshop like this, and the student base quickly becomes a family, spending every day learning together and making furniture alongside one another, sharing equipment, and helping one another. It’s a highly vocational environment and a kinaesthetic learning approach is employed alongside academic studies.
The last time I had been to Rycotewood was to see the end-of-year show in 2019, just before the catastrophe of covid. 2019 was also the last academic year that the former head of course Joseph Bray was teaching before he moved to the Sylva Foundation, in his stead, the school welcomed Josh Hudson, a cabinet maker turned educator. In the few years since 2019, the school has seen a lot of change, there are some new faces in the team of skilled woodworkers who teach and run the school, some of whom I studied with and know well. The building has somewhat changed too, where there was once an upholstery studio, there is now a full workshop designated for apprentice students, and where the apprentice students once studied there is now a Mill, but the parts of the building that I worked in when I was a student looked familiar. In fact, I felt a familiar type of energy here, I’d arrived on a day when the school was prepping for the end-of-year show, Furniture scattered around the workshops and corridors, ready for curation. Both larger workshops had been emptied of their workbenches and received a fresh lick of paint from teams of students. In a smaller workshop, some degree students were finishing off projects, perhaps for the Gordon Russel module that takes place every year. This is a tense part of the year, with deadlines condensed into the riffraff of the end-of-year show preparation, external examiners looming, the stress can be seen, but it’s still a light-hearted and exciting place to be.
I followed Drew, jaw slacked as he took me around the faculty pointing out interesting furniture pieces and new equipment, I was in awe of the place as if it were the first time I’d been there. We passed a hallway of student work, into the Mill where I got to speak to Geoff, an engineer turned furniture maker and woodworking technician responsible for the machinery and equipment that lives in the mill. Geoff knows almost everything about his machines and could probably build a replica of any of them from scratch if you gave him the means. He proudly showed off the new CNC machine, it’s a big and exciting machine for a place like this, capable of producing jigs, molds, and components at the click of a button, opening new possibilities for the school. Drew left me in the Mill as Geoff and I geeked out about his cast-iron and tooling. After my chat with Geoff, I was allowed to roam the halls and get up close and personal with bits of furniture that I deemed noseyable, which, in a place like this is most furniture.
I met Josh Hudson for the first time, an energetic type of person and very aspirational. Ae spoke, as we sat next to a table that had a climbing wall built into it's underside, he shared with me his experience joining the college, bringing in more apprentices, and upgrading the machinery. I queried him on his thoughts about conversations I had with other makers regarding self-motivation and imposter syndrome. His perspective was that social media had a big part to play, we now have access to others’ lives and practices just in the palm of our hand, every day we are in danger of living vicariously through what other people decide to share publicly, and from that, we can end up critically comparing our-self’s. This is something that his generation didn’t have access to and probably benefited from, and today the younger generation of makers and creatives have this to contend with.
After our chat I meandered around some more until I again found myself trapped in a maze of furniture; the first-year work was now subject to my nosy inquisition. A group of students had congregated around as I spoke with them about what they had been making, One student named Mohammed explained his background in interior design. It was interesting to hear his first-hand experience in translating his design theory from his last university to practical design skills in furniture making. He speculated that he has become a better designer as a result of learning the practical’s of furniture making, he now has the technical ability to design his work with manufacturing limitations considered. It’s a very interesting cross over and I’ve always thought that design needs the context of making, and his experience backs up my theory.
By this point, it was the afternoon and I had almost exhausted myself with the excitement of looking at all these new pieces of phenomenal furniture, like Douglas-fir drafting tables and upcycled stools made from residence suite furniture intercepted from going to landfill discarded from student halls.
Before leaving I found Dr. Lynn Jones, who is a widely respected and arguably famous woman in the furniture world for being the head-hunter for the industry. She is a successful designer, responsible for the ‘Breastfeeding Chair’ which is in use today in maternity wards across the country as an ergonomic chair for breastfeeding, she has been an educator at New-Bucks university and this year was her last year as the guest design tutor at Rycotewood. She is an incredible woman and very insightful to talk to because of her role as a head-hunter. She’s got experiences interacting with furniture companies that would make you realize how friendly the furniture industry is. It’s not uncommon for a student to feel nervous about getting a job in the industry, in my experience, the idea of getting my first job could expose me as being a phony, that’s what it felt like. And speaking to Lynn she will be the first one to tell you that people in the industry are just as sensitive towards their craft as you, and want to work with like-minded individuals, the industry is a supportive place, and competition culture is near non-existent, she cares about people and matching those people together, she describes her role as a furniture dating service, matching employee and employer via their disposition and character using her wealth of knowledge about the industry and her seemingly infinite connections she has the ability to make pairings that will last. It is refreshing to know that someone like this exists in the industry, to nurture and help those who are struggling to find work or workers in the industry. Lynn knows that people want to work with others who they enjoy being around. This makes for a much more friendly environment for prospering furniture makers, and I wouldn’t want it any other way.
Later that week I joined the staff for drinks. I sat with them in a local bar and while I was there I realized I was sitting among a grove of woodworkers, a cabinet of makers, a faculty of teachers, the cohort of skills here consists of turners, designers, an engineer, and cabinet makers all capable of making anything you could fit inside a house. The people around this table are responsible for teaching the next generation of furniture makers. And I felt honoured to witness them in this informal setting, jesting, fooling, and narrating stories with one another at the end of another successful year of teaching, ready for their end-of-year show the following Monday. They are an entertaining suite of people and I look forward to when I next visit Rycotewood.

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