JONATHAN ROSE DESIGN

Here’s some more stuff for furniture makers, furniture lovers, design geeks and generally happy people. There may be a laugh along the way. I’d love to hear from you if you are moved to respond, just a click away. The website will soon link to jonathanrosedesigns facebook page which I expect to have the usual Facebook stuff, and my tweets when they start up again.

Over the last few weeks I have been working in the MAKE Aberdeen workshop, run by Peacock Visual Arts and Aberdeen City council at 17 Belmont Street. In there is a laser cutter, digital sewing machine, 3D printer, flatbed router and some electrical stuff. Really helpful staff, Iain and Conner, especially if you have limited vector graphics skills.

There is a big question out there for me right now – how do you decorate wood or indeed why would you do so if it is such a beautiful material? Here is what I’m experimenting with; inlaying copper into wood. It has a colour offer, a shape offer and wire comes in remarkably accurate widths. This combination has the strange effect of being visible if the light is shining in one direction yet invisible from another.

From the laser cutter came this simple shape – about 20mm square. Combining it with 2 mm plate copper and I could get a shape like this. The laser cutter couldn’t do the copper, but Poseidon (Old Meldrum) have a water-jet cutter that can. This is a remarkable tool – cuts 50mm granite.

No more scalpels, no more files. A big question – what new skills?

Then what started out as a picture like this; a 1920s textile, possibly Bauhaus or Omega workshops

could turn into a decoration like this – or at least the starting point.