Woodturning Articles

“one of the most thought provoking articles to appear in a woodworking magazine for many years” - Traditional Woodworking.

Beauty versus Perfection

When I first started turning wood I was determined that nothing but the best would flow from my lathe. Arrogant hopefulness indeed as my skills were to say the least rudimentary. Never having had a lesson, having read a single chapter in a "Crafts at Home" type of book I had only the advice of a friend who had watched a master to go on. Still I was determined, and determination will eventually lead to results. After some years of turning I realised that by going for higher standards of perfection than most of my customers had eyes to appreciate I was pricing myself out of the market. This did not make me give up. I simply sought fancier shops that could command higher prices. Perfection to me was a Holy Grail, never to be questioned, always to be pursued. It was a slow realisation, a snail's pace accumulation of observations and pieces of learning that eventually turned me around.

For instance I noticed that when selling at craft markets it was not always my best work that went first. I noticed that when visiting shows by the top carvers or furniture makers it was sometimes the daringly rustic that appealed to me most. I noticed that the runs of perfectly identical balusters produced by copy lathes were not as pleasing to the eye as the merely similar ones produced by hand turners. So what is going on in these matters? What is the thread that connects these observations.

I found this to be a deep question taking me many years of thought to address. In order to expound it here I want to look at two hundred years of development in furniture and woodcrafts - as well as some recent discoveries about how we actually see things, with the eyes and also with the mind.

If you take a look at turnings from the time before we had copy lathes, a particular difference becomes apparent. Wander into a museum or stately home displaying 18th Century furniture and examine the legs, balustrade and turnings there. The two front legs of any given chair are as likely to be identical as two birch leaves. The elements of the balustrade the same.

Accuracy was not of concern in those days, at least beyond the point where a lack of it smacks you in the eye. What they did work on was the elegance of their designs. Pre-Victorian furniture had a grace and elegance that was pleasant to live with. This is a point that many makers of fine furniture are agreed upon.

So, what happened around 1830 that changed things?

Among other technological developments, the copy lathe was invented. I can just hear the factory manager now, telling his workers that he (or his competitor) has got a machine that can turn out identical components. His (apparent?) scorn of their craftsmanship must have bitten deep; those craftsman turners must have feared for their livelihoods.

From this point on, the emphasis in turned work shifts steadily from elegance to accuracy. By late Victorian times, the elegance is entirely lost. Accuracy has triumphed. The two front legs of an 1880 chair, even if they bear the marks of hand turning are now really identical. The pillars either side of the dresser are without difference. Gone is the leaf like similarity, the turner has now succeeded where previously he did not bother. Yet shapes had by then become pompous, rectitude rules over joy. Furniture is now about proving to your circle that you have what it takes, instead of being about a making a home that is a joy to be in.

Now, at the inception of the 21st Century, we are to a great extent still in thrall of the machine. Too often, we set our standards not on what we ourselves would really like to live with, but on what is beyond criticism. A criticism based on perfection, on rectitude, not on joy. Copy lathes turn out identical pieces, and we humans (who invented and invested in them) think we have to compete. But could it actually be a handicap of copy lathes that they cannot make minute variations between pieces?

It sometimes seems to me that we have become a world of Conti-board perfectionists, whose veneered MDF creations hit us in the eye with engineering standards of accuracy but leave our artistic sensibilities unmoved. Brilliant jointing, brilliant veneering, exciting use of the world's timbers. impressive but unfriendly or even arrogant in terms of aesthetics.

I was fascinated a few years ago to read some research into how the eye sees, how the eye and the mind together assemble an image for us to understand the world we live in and create. It seems that when we rest our eyes on something, our eyes do not rest at all. They dance. They move across the item this way and that, picking out high points, corners, reflective bits, shadows and details, supporting the creation in our mind of an image that makes sense of the patches of light, shade and colour at which we are looking. Thus the various aspects of colour, light and dark resolve themselves into a concept in our minds - wooden chair, lacquered desk and so on. On top of this, we then add further assessments such as like or dislike, admiration or dismissal and so on. It is this dance that gave me the key. Called saccades (taken from the ancient Greek for dance), this pattern of eyeball movement also betrays how much an item engages our interest. It seems that the more prolonged and complex our saccadic engagement with an object, the more it has taken our subconscious interest.

Now, apply this to a comparison of machine-made and hand-made components, and most interesting results emerge. Taking a balustrade as an example, it seems that when every individual baluster is turned on a copy lathe, the eye 'dances' only briefly up and down the set before dropping away to find other entertainment. Compare this to what happens when the eye falls on a balustrade of hand-turned components. Now we find that the small differences keep the eye running up and down this way and that over the balustrade for far longer before the attention is turned to other things.

I must stress that this is not about the conscious attention given to things. This is about the infinitesimal flicker of the eyeball that occurs far below the threshold of conscious intent or even awareness. Saccadic eyeball movement has been discovered by ultra-fast camera work and is invisible to normal watching. It is said that when someone's eyes look alive and vital, it is because they have healthy saccadic reflexes. In the case of dull or tired looking eyes, it is the lack of the invisible saccadic flicker that gives this dull impression. Certain eye conditions, including the habitual wearing of strong glasses, and the staring at screens for long hours, can suppress the saccadic actions in the eye. Whereas certain exercises such as noticing the difference in the colour and shade of the greens in leaves, when in light or in shade, or noticing foreground and background of a view simultaneously, re-activates them.

So, if copy-lathe-turned components sustain less saccadic interest than the hand-turned equivalent, what does this tell us? It seems to me to confirm my own personal feeling that the skill of turning things until they are identical is best left to machines; or rather that it is best avoided altogether. It seems to say that a home or workplace filled with mass-produced, identical perfection is dulling to the soul. It seems to say that the small differences created by the skilled hand are a positive contribution to our daily life and environment.

Consider again the pre-Victorian balustrade. Often, this concern with variety has been taken beyond the small differences between hand-turnings, and two or three different designs of baluster have been alternated up the stair case. This really underlines how unsatisfactory it is to have too much similarity in our surroundings. Does a tree, for example, strive to make every leaf the same? Certainly not. Each one is clearly of that species, yes: but identical, no.

Myself, I struggled for perfection for many years. As I outlined at the start, perfection was a big goal for me. If I heard anyone criticizing perfectionism, however, I would agree with that criticism and declare that what I sought was excellence. Perfection was to me a secret desire. A desire to be beyond criticism.

I now believe that this attitude, this need to be beyond criticism is rife in our society. It seems to me a product of the technological age. A product of our commonly human way of judging ourselves against the machines we have invented. Even though on the face of it, it is ridiculous to judge oneself against one's own inventions, it is the human way. When we invented clocks, we declared the stars were moved in their courses by hidden wheels. Time keeping began to be an obsession that still accelerates the pace of life today. Having invented computers, we declare that the human mind works like a computer. But who can be as clever as a computer, as strong as an earth mover, as regular as clockwork, as untiring as any machine?

More to the point - is it really desirable? If our friends and relations were as uncaring as computers, as care-less as a digger, as inhuman as any machine. would we want to live and associate with them? Is any machine as creative as a human being?

Do we want to associate with the output of machines, as opposed to the output of hand and nature? Who, after all, prefers Conti-board to real wood, acid-catalyzed lacquer to Danish oil?

Machines have their place in our world. Most of us do not seriously want to live without them, none of us can avoid their influence in our lives: but do we need to mimic them?

Consider again the 18th Century chair, with its inaccurate turnings and sufficiently similar legs. Is there not, in its simple elegance, something we would all love to have in our homes?

Where now, then, the striving for excellence? It must have a place, for the drive to do better is (thank God) powerful in all of us. The question, then, is better in what way?

In my own work as a wood turner, teacher and maker of instruments, I strive now to make things appropriate to the use and occasion. Turned tableware, for example, I am proud to produce with such skill that no broken grain results from the turning. I am then able to leave this un-sanded. Where is the use in sanding if it is to be washed up regularly? Were sanding necessary, in order to remove unsightly broken grain, then I would sand - but to remove the ripple of the gouge is no more necessary than it is for an artist to smooth out his brush strokes. The handling of his subject is his art, the brush strokes are his craft. Why remove the marks of skill?

Yet even this dedication to the craftsman's touch is not a fixed rule. In my Sounding Bowls I sand the interior surface carefully. The smoothness of this surface reflects the sound and shows up the grain most effectively for the player. Yet the outside is hand carved. The texture is an added sensory delight. People ask me why I hand carve them, some five hours work, when I could texture the outside with an Arbotech in ten minutes. I reply that the difference is as subtly real as the difference between wood grained Conti-board* and real wood grain. One is alive, the other is a mere shadow of the truth.

When I take on a balustrade commission, I will often mention to the client my research into eye dance and explain that the small differences are a real plus. This is not as an excuse for poor workmanship, but as a remedy for any conditioning they may have suffered in this machine-perfection-dead world.

Differences should not be such that the eye is drawn to them. (apart, perhaps from a fellow craftsman's eye) Yet it is amazing, to those who begin to practice the craft, how little others see. Focusing on problems is part of learning something; in areas where we have no expertise, we focus not on the problems, but the joys. Ignorance is bliss, you might say.

Small differences in things are valuable, even if by human nature they are inevitable. Really they should be celebrated, not avoided. In fact I often find, even among skilled makers a defensive concern that their work is less perfect than it should be. It is as if they have not accepted that their work is truly better for that level of imperfection, would be devoid of soul without it.

This critical approach to accuracy is rampant in the world today, and I suggest that it is distracting us from more rewarding matters. If the inaccuracy was an eyesore, or led to things not fitting together, it would then be a problem. But beyond that, it should not be. What has happened is that a need for accuracy, learned in and valuable to engineering, has crept across into aesthetics; partly for the reasons described above, partly for others more inscrutable, but crept it has. There are exceptions. Not everything hand-made today is dominated by rectitude and a desire to be beyond criticism. There are those who, in reaction, make things ostentatiously rough. 'Rough' need not be a criticism. Consider rustic work, where roughness is for natures sake, for the sake of the beauty in nature's own forms. However some makers attract attention by being ostentatiously rough. Such ostentation may help to awaken us to the extremes we have gone to, yet rough for rough's sake is no better than perfection for perfection's sake. Neither are pleasant to live with.

Yet there are those subtle few whose desire is to make things that are simply pleasant to live with, and who let any critics rant to their pens content. Excepting these, however, the mode today is still to put rectitude above joy.

So I say, let us abandon this concern with getting it right: let us get it beautiful. Let us make what gives us real, deep-down pleasure, what we consider to be beautiful and worthwhile, whether that be individual items, pieces created to suit the home of the customer or the repair of old treasures.

If one sets a goal of appropriate excellence for oneself, a goal of excellent imperfection one quickly encounters another problem. There is no set standard of imperfection, no perfect imperfection to strive for. Each of us has to consider the purpose of the project in hand and ask ourselves what is a really-pleasant-to-live-with standard of excellence for this piece. Striving to such a self set standard is setting our sights beyond the dead perfection of the machine onto a standard of excellence that is human, and is nature oriented.

If we all do things in the way that we believe to be best, there will be more excellence, more variety and more beauty in the world. And there will be less fear that what we make is somehow not good enough.

Copyright. T.J.Kaye 2002 All rights rest with the author should you wish to publish this a phone call may be all you need to pay for. call 01364 642837

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the original for this re write was published in Traditional Woodworking in July 2002

* on the subject of contiboard consider this:
When laminates first came out they were uniform colours. This perfect evenness was soon seen to be boring. Imitating the variable colours of wood grain was a simple step to break the monotony. Soon this was seen as cheap and the makers came up with a way of breaking the perfect evenness of the surface to imitate the pores in wood grain. This is a simple example of how perfection is less interesting than variation.

A similar move away from the dead uniformity enforced by the machine was the move toward knotty pine walling popular in the states. The comparative uniformity of clean "high grade" boarding was beginning to pall on people whose lives were increasingly dominated by mass manufacture.