Feature A unique design comes to life


Cumbria-based furniture maker, John Whitfield, has just delivered one of his biggest and most complicated commissions to a client on the west coast of Cumbria.


Last year, students on the Foundation Degree in Furniture Crafts in Carlisle entered a competition to design a board room table. The winning concept was designed by Tim Parkinson but John Whitfield, a recent graduate of the course, was commissioned to turn Tim’s ideas into reality.


Both Tim and John are former students of course leader Craig Murchie. “To see how John has translated Tim’s winning design ideas is fantastic,” says Craig. “The quality of John’s work is a credit to our course and a great example of how traditional skills and craftsmanship can create something that is modern, useful and absolutely stunning.”


The table measures 4.5 metres by 2.25 metres and John has used over 1000 kgs of oak as well as stainless steel and other materials. The table needed to be constructed so that it could be broken down into sections, moved and reconstructed very easily and it also needed to be a useful working table, with all the IT and communications connections and infrastructure that modern working requires.


“The practicalities of construction have made this more like an engineering project than a traditional piece of furniture making,” agrees John, “and the table has completely filled my Armathwaite workshop during the latter stages. The design incorporates various energy motifs such as wind turbine blades, waves and even 12 very slim nuclear power station cooling towers. Tim had included some fantastic ideas and making them a reality has been a brilliant challenge.”


John is now working on a couple of much smaller commissions for clients in Cumbria and also in his native North East: “I doubt that I will ever work on anything quite as big as this table again,” he says, “but, in some ways, the combination of a unique piece of design that also does a specific job is exactly what my furniture designs are all about.”


John’s full range of furniture and information on commissions and his environmental policies are online at www.johnwhitfieldfurniture.com.


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