PRACTICAL MAGIC
Furniture that’s more than just functional
Behind a row of black T-shirts hanging on a clothesline is Rowan Dicks’ shed. It contains tools, wood, dust and the usual mismatched shed inhabitants. But in one corner stands a cluster of extraordinary furniture that looks like it would rather be somewhere a tad more glamorous.
Dicks makes furniture that sidelines as art. His chairs aren’t just for sitting in, they are objects to be looked at closely, to glide a hand over and to wonder how on earth he did it.
At first he learnt by doing. Taking wood of any sort and making it into something was his saving grace as a teenager. He remembers being 13 and his parents wanted a wine rack.
‘‘And I thought, ‘oh, I can try and do that’. I went to some old guy’s shed and used his bandsaw and I put it together and I still have it now. I laugh at it now, but it’s still special.’’
High school was a place he wasn’t that into and he says he probably would have left early if it he hadn’t found his love of working with wood.
‘‘It felt like there was nothing for me at school, but luckily they saw something in me and wanted me to stay just to experience the last bit. I gave it a go and I think it formed me.’’
He was allowed to go to the woodwork room whenever he wanted, and he would look out for and help the other students who were there. It’s where Dicks consolidated what it was in life that he wanted to do and it showed him something else as well, he was a natural at teaching other people.
He went to UCOL to study furniture design and making, and gained real inspiration from his tutor, Andy Halewood.
‘‘I just remember him knowing everything. He was always there and he always knew how to answer you and help you. He loves working on his own stuff and artistically, I draw real inspiration from that.’’
Dicks works alongside Halewood now. After graduating, he went and worked out in the
industry for a while, but eventually returned to UCOL – this time as a tutor.
‘‘It’s amazing actually. We work so well together, if we ever have a problem, we just go, ‘well here’s five different ideas’ and we kind of nail it into one and it works.’’
He loves to teach and he says the students keep him excited about what he does.
‘‘It makes me passionate about my job, but it also keeps me passionate about going home to my shed and carrying on with my own things.’’
And those things are bespoke and beautiful. A chair, that he says he will never sell, curves up from its back legs into two antler-like peaks. It’s made from little plywood off cuts, the bits you would find on a workshop floor. When you look closely it’s like an intricate game of Jenga, all pieced together.
On his bench is another labour of absolute love – a handmade guitar that just won him a first place at the National Woodskills Competition. He doesn’t really play the guitar, but he wants to, and that was part of the challenge. Each step was a new one and he says that’s something he loves, the continual learning that comes from working with wood.
‘‘I am always growing and I will always make my own things. Every job that I have had, I have said to my boss that I will do my stuff in my own time. I just have to, I just love it.’’
It’s something that people want, he says, a thought-out piece of furniture that is beautiful as well as functional. It’s something that big mass-produced furniture shops have had an effect on, but Dicks’ says that the want for something bespoke is starting to return.
‘‘It’s easy for people to go to the big shops where it’s interest-free and all that, that will always be there. But there are plenty of people out there who want something special and get excited about design.’’
As well as his own imaginings that go from a design to pottering around in his shed after getting home from his day job, Dicks works to commission. The tricky thing with that, he says, is ‘‘getting their idea out of their head’’.
‘‘People can’t always draw, so they tell you what they want in words and you have to try to visualise that and get it down on paper. It’s always nice when someone says they want your twist on it.’’
And his twist is often a re-think of conventions, his furniture has function, but it also has an avantgarde edge with grace and jaunt. Dicks makes beauty exist in everyday things, a bit of practical magic made among the dust of a shed.