Researching Through Gaps: Furniture, Atmosphere and Architectural Weight
This phase of the project focused on building the research foundations necessary to develop a viable system of modular joining mechanisms for my sculptural practice. Rather than prioritising immediate production, this stage concentrated on archival research, contextual study and material understanding — work that underpins all subsequent making.
My initial plan was to spend sustained time in the High Wycombe Furniture Archive, studying original technical drawings and production documents firsthand. I wanted direct access to the material evidence of joinery systems — the drawings, measurements and structural logic that defined furniture production in High Wycombe during the 1960s and 1970s. That plan did not survive first contact with reality.
The archivist responsible for the collection had inherited it in a state of significant disorganisation and was in the process of a long-term restructuring project. Physical access was limited and it quickly became clear that waiting for ideal conditions would stall the work. Rather than pause the project, I shifted the early phase of research online, working through available digitised material and assembling an understanding of the archive remotely. This limitation shaped the research in unexpected and productive ways.
Working With What Exists
The online High Wycombe Furniture Archive provided access to G-Plan technical drawings, Ercol joinery details, promotional pamphlets and E. Gomme furniture catalogues. These materials offered structural clarity — exploded views, fixings, tolerances and the logic of repeatable manufacture. They showed how furniture was designed to be assembled efficiently, repaired when necessary and produced at scale. What they did not provide was atmosphere.
Technical drawings describe how something is made, but not how it behaves in space. They flatten labour, weight and material behaviour into information. For a project that sits between furniture logic and architectural sensibility, that absence mattered.
Looking Beyond the Archive
To address this gap, I widened the research. I visited High Wycombe Museum to study chairs in the collection, paying close attention to how joints operate in three dimensions — how they resolve corners, manage stress and remain visible or concealed in use.
This was followed by a visit to the Chair Making Museum at Kraftinwood, where I spent two hours learning about the history of furniture design with Robert, whose knowledge of the High Wycombe furniture industry is both technical and lived. That discussion filled gaps no drawing could address: the pragmatics of workshop production, the relationship between hand, tool and jig, and the ways joinery decisions were shaped by time, cost and material availability.
These encounters reinforced an important point: joinery is not neutral. It is always the result of constraint, and it carries those decisions forward into the object.
Atmosphere, Architecture and Material Presence
It became clear that joinery diagrams alone were not sufficient to inform my sculptural work. The archive provides structure, but not atmosphere — and atmosphere is central to how my work operates.
The emotional quality of architecture, the behaviour of light across surfaces and the perceived weight of materials are as influential to my practice as any technical system. My sculptures often originate in shadow forms — ambiguous, geometric and transient — and the joining mechanisms I am developing need to belong convincingly to that language.
To bridge this gap, I turned to books such as G Plan Revolution, The: A Celebration of British Popular Furniture of the 1950s and 1960s, by Basil Hyman and Steven Braggs that could support both the historical research and the architectural sensibility of the work.
Books and Printed Material
I worked with a mixture of furniture design manuals, mid-century catalogues and architectural texts. The furniture books offered insight into joinery systems, but also revealed how designers in the 1960s spoke about structure and materiality. There is a confidence in this period — a belief in proportion, clarity and visible construction — that closely aligns with the principles underpinning Brutalist and post-war Modernist architecture.
Alongside this, I returned to architectural books on the Barbican Centre, a site that has informed my practice for decades. I first visited in 1983 on an O-level art trip and have returned regularly since. Its mass, shadow and concrete surfaces continue to shape how I think about space and form.
Although this project centres on furniture joinery, it remains rooted in an architectural sensibility. The joins I am developing need to feel structurally intelligent, precise and unapologetic, with a quietness that allows the work to hold space rather than dominate it.
Photographs: Labour and Shadow
Photographs played a key role in connecting these strands of research. Archival images of Wycombe furniture factories — particularly production-line scenes and joint-testing demonstrations — revealed something absent from diagrams: the physicality of making. Hands, bodies and materials under stress foreground labour in ways that directly inform how visible I want construction to be in my own work.
Alongside this, I revisited my own photographic archive of architectural shadows from The Barbican Centre and drew out key shadow shapes. These images are central to my sculptural thinking and remind me why modular systems matter to my practice. By bringing this sensibility into dialogue with furniture joinery research, I am asking how two languages — architectural shadow and furniture structure — might intersect.
Colour as Context
Colour research emerged as another necessary layer. Jesmonite behaves very differently from paint, and its pigments can easily overwhelm form if handled without restraint. Revisiting mid-century colour palettes — earthy colours such as ochres, deep greens, muted oranges and pale neutrals — provided historical anchors connected to the material culture of the period.
These references guided decision-making rather than prescribe outcomes, ensuring that colour supports form, structure and material behaviour.
What This Stage Established
This research phase was not about accumulation for its own sake. It was about situating the project within a broader visual, material and cultural context, ensuring that subsequent making would be informed, deliberate and grounded.
Joinery does not exist in isolation; it belongs to a system of values about how objects are made, how labour is revealed and how work occupies space.
Bringing these sources together clarified what the joining mechanisms I am developing need to communicate:
structural intelligence
clarity of form
sensitivity to material behaviour
alignment with mid-century and Modernist design principles
and the atmospheric qualities underpinning my wider sculptural practice
With this foundation in place, the project was ready to move from research into design — where translation, distortion and new possibilities begin.