John Makepeace was enchanted as a child when he found a cache of offcuts left behind by a carpenter working on his family’s house. Wood was rationed in postwar England and hard to come by, so the boy began visiting “the old gentlemen making cricket bats” at a local workshop; he would usually leave with some material to work with. All these years later, Makepeace’s passion for playing with wood is undimmed. And after a long, legendary career, his latest furniture remains fresh and fascinating. As a teenager in the 1950s, Makepeace visited Copenhagen several times and was impressed by the work in the annual cabinetmaker’s exhibitions there. But when he returned to England and apprenticed in a shop where Danish designs intended for production were copied and made by hand one at a time, it struck him as “a bit of a nonsense.” He says that the experience “underlined for me that individual makers need to find a language of their own to open up possibilities for distinctive forms and inventive methods of making.” A recent piece, Conical—a collector’s cabinet in scorched English oak and ripple sycamore with circular drawers that can be slid right out and placed on the shelf—is yet more evidence that Makepeace found his own language, and that he continues to design furniture of exceptional inventiveness, power, and finesse.
Photos: Stephen James
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