Textos extraídos de entrevistas a Tage Frid, James Krenov y Sam Maloof:
Por su evidente interés, reproduzco aquí algunos párrafos sacados de estas entrevistas a tres grandes maestros, designer-maker, designer and woodworker o wood composer, como a ellos les gustaba denominarse.
La entrevista a Tage Frid es la más antigua de las tres, pues se llevó a cabo entre 1980 y 1982; en ella, Frid narra que su padre era platero en Copenhague y como, siendo un niño, ayudaba a su padre, pero no le gustaba el oficio de platero porque este implicaba pasar mucho tiempo puliendo y puliendo y, por otra parte, no le gustaba trabajar con metales - no obstante, afirmará después su interés por trabajar con aluminio blando, un material que según él puede trabajarse con las máquinas como si fuera madera -.
[...] the first three months as an apprentice, I come in and then there was a pile, it seemed like 50 feet long, maybe it was ten or twelve feet, and it was all mahogany and it was stacked up and it was all rough so I had to cut it by hand, square it, join it together, plane it, surface plane it, cut it in size, put the molding on it, everything by hand. I did that for three or four months, and oh, I hated every minute of it ...
You see, the thing was when I was finished, I could certainly handle a saw and a plane
...
And a plane, I could sharpen both, and different molding planes and things like that. Then I started making different joints by hand, and then I started making furniture that was going to be sold. The first one I made, that was a chest of drawers with a curved front and they had one of those, what do you call it? Legs?
. [...] los primeros tres meses como aprendiz, llego y había una pila como de 50 pies de largo - 15 m -, quizá era de diez o doce pies, toda de caoba apilada en bruto, así que tuve que cortarla a mano, escuadrarla y ensamblarla, rectificarla con el cepillo, cortarla a medida, ponerle molduras, todo a mano. Hizo esto durante tres o cuatro meses y, ay, odié cada minuto de aquello ... al final, mira, cuando acabé podía manejar de verdad el serrucho y el cepillo ... Y podía afilar ambos, y diferentes molduras y cosas así. Empecé entonces a hacer diferentes uniones a mano, y así empecé a hacer muebles para la venta. El primero que hice fue un mueble de cajones con un frente curvado y tenía unas patas de esas, ¿cómo se llaman? Cabriolé ...].
Mr Brown (entrevistador). Did it take quite a while to learn the machines? [¿Le llevó mucho tiempo aprender a utilizar las máquinas?]
MR. FRID: No because when you have the knowledge of how to do it by hand, then it is more or less the same except the inner joints, if you can cut the half of a line, that seem to fit. You understand? If you can split the line in half and have the soft curve on the way side, I think it's going to fit. It's just setting it up and wanting it, and this is set up, right? [No, porque cuando sabes cómo hacerlo a mano, entonces es más o menos lo mismo, excepto en uniones interiores, si puedes cortar en dos por una línea, así se ajustan las partes, ¿comprende? Si puedes cortar por una línea en dos, sabes que va a ajustar. Es cuestión de montarlo y querer hacerlo, ¿de acuerdo?].
...
MR. FRID: [...] most of it was done by hand, but today I still think you should do something by hand but you shouldn't spend three years or two years doing it by hand because who rip a plank by hand when you can go over to a table saw, I mean it is ridiculous, right? I mean, I will show them how but you don't have to be perfect because if you can handle a saw and cut half of the line, then you can make any joint, and so I teach them by hand first, but then you go to the machine and you use the same principle.
So I think it's a waste of time to stay there and sand and cut everything by hand – I mean, it is stupid to plane it by hand when you can do it fast on the jointer and the [inaudible] planner. For example, the five years, the first year I didn't learn much. The second year, I learned a little, but then the third, fourth and fifth years, those were your real, real start doing it
[...] la mayor parte se hacía a mano, pero hoy pienso todavía que hay que hacer cosas a mano, pero no durante tres años, o dos, porque ¿quién corta en dos rip un tablón si puedes hacerlo con una sierra de mesa? Es que es ridículo, ¿no? Es decir, hay que enseñarles cómo hacerlo pero no tiene que ser pefecto si puedes manejar un serrucho y cortar por la línea, entonces puedes hacer cualquier unión, así que les enseño a mano primero, para que vayan a la máquina y utilicen el mismo principio.
Así que creo que es una pérdida de tiempo estar ahí y lijar y cortar todo a mano, quiero decir, es estúpido rectificar a mano cuando puedes hacerlo rápidamente con una cepilladora y una regruesadora. Por ejemplo, los primeros años, el primer año no aprendí mucho. El segundo año, aprendí algo, pero el tercer, el cuarto y el quinto, esos sí que fueron de verdad, empezar a hacerlo en serio].
...
MR. BROWN: The beauty of wood. What about -- how far do you carry your design in terms of maybe making the wood perform in rather complicated ways? Do you try to avoid complexity? [La belleza de la madera. ¿Qué hay de eso - hasta qué punto lleva su diseño en términos de hacer quizá que la madera se exhiba de modo más complejo? ¿Trata de evitar la complejidad?]
MR. FRID: I mean, let's put it this way. I think the most difficult thing is when you learn -- when you design is -- especially the furniture -- is proportion. You have to watch you don't make a base and then put a top or other cabinet on top. That's two things that doesn't belong together, that the relation for that table, the thickness of the tabletop, if that had been a thin one, I mean, it didn't belong there, right? [Bueno, vamos a decirlo así. Creo que lo más difícil es cuando te das cuenta, cuando tu diseño - sobre todo en los muebles - es la proporción. Tienes que tener cuidado de no hacer una base y entonces poner una tapa u otro mueble sobre ella. Son dos cosas que no se relacionan entre sí, que la relación para esa mesa, el grosor de la tapa, si tiene que ser fina, es decir, no casa ,,, ¿verdad?
MR. BROWN: No [no].
MR. FRID: So the relation to -- I mean, how thick should the leg be and the width and how much should it taper and shape it and so on is something -- you can't really teach it. You follow me? [Así que la relación, quiero decir cuan gruesa tiene que ser la pata y la anchura y cuánto ha de inclinarse y la forma, etc. de algo, no puedes enseñar esto, ¿me sigue?]
Ahora soy soy el que hablo (Luis): confirmo que las proporciones de una caja, o el grueso de las paredes que la conforma, o de su tapa, eso no se puede enseñar, probablemente ni siquiere se puede dibujar por el propio autor, porque el resultado no será la misma impresión que recibimos de los planos, por muy perfectos que estos sean.
Entrevista a James Krenov:
James Krenov nació en Uelen, Chukotka, en 1920. Sus padres eran unos aventureros, que acabaron dando clase (la madre) a los Chukchees, después fueron a Shanghai, para recalar finalmente en Seattle o Vancouver - el propio Krenov no lo recordaba exactamente, para establecerse finalmente en Alaska.
En la entrevista, Krenov recuerda fabricarse sus propios juguetes desde la edad de seis años, trabajó después durante un corto período en Jensen Motorboat y le gustaban las (magníficas) fotografías de Morris Rosenfedl publicadas en la revista Yatching.
Las respuestas de Krenov en la entrevista son una verdadera declaración de intenciones:
I've never made furniture professionally ... I'm an amateur and I'll always be. That's the way I want to die. I’m an amateur by nature and I’m an amateur in fact. And David Pye wrote somewhere that the best work of this century would certainly be done by amateurs.
Krenov refiere una anécdota de cuando trabajó con Carl Malmstead, una anécdota frecuente por otra parte en las artes en general:
But anyway, here’s this young man making a chair and Carl comes in. He’s going to get George and they’re going out to lunch, and he stops at this boy and he looks at the chair and he says, “Y-y-you got it wrong. Th-th-that’s not right.” He goes, gets George, goes out, had lunch, comes back, passes the same boy. “N-n-n-now you got it. That’s a lot better.” The boy hadn’t touched it. So much for the perfect eye, you know, but otherwise he could pick up a millimeter or two that was not the way it should be, and a curve especially – you know, a curve.
The essence of the book - creo que se refiere a The Unknown Craftsman. A Japanese Insigt into Beauty, de Soetsu Yanagi - is where he says, “Don’t be analytical when you look at an object. Perceive – just expose yourself to the object, but don’t ask yourself, is this the golden angle? Is this this? Does this counteract that? Does this way go against that? Just expose yourself.” And that was the essence of seeing, you know, still is.
The basis of the whole thing is that you should not be unhappy in the primary thing that occupies you.
o le decía a los estudiantes:
My standard formula was the better work you do, the more chance that you’ll starve.
MR. FITZGERALD: Really?
MR. KRENOV: It’s an inverse proportion. If you do wonderful work, you’re going to have a hell of a time. You’re a wonderful student. You’re talented, but you’re just going to have one hell of a time.
...
MR. FITZGERALD: How long do you think it takes to really develop your skills? Does it vary from person to person?
MR. KRENOV: Well, it’s a slow progression. I don’t think that other than the general use of tools and kinds of wood and safe use of machines and so on – you know, the elementary things. Some people have a very sensitive intuition and sense of proportion and line and other people never will. You could have them for 20 years as a student and they still won’t. Unfortunately, the guy left at the school just doesn’t have any talent.
But anyway, I don’t think that you can. For example, you cannot teach a person to be musical. You can teach them to play, but you can’t teach them to be musical. I was in New York and I came back to my hotel room and they were having the 80th birthday concert by [Arthur] Rubinstein – Carnegie Hall, the whole ball of wax. And they were interviewing him in the intermission and somebody asked him about the contemporary students – about the students of that time. He says, “Oh, such technicians, such skills. Oh, sometimes I ask one of them, when are you going to make music?”
...
MR. KRENOV: There is a plant stand up at the school one of my Japanese friends gave us that has absolutely physically impossible joints, but someone has made them to prove that a human being can do those joints, you know. And I met him in Japan and it was his father that had made some boxes with those joints, but they defy gravity, they defy grain, they defy common sense, but it proves that you can create that pattern with those joints and do it. And the nature of the joints is such that you can never put them together and take them apart. You put them together once and probably it’s on the diagonal. You can’t put them straight in. You’ve got to bring them together like that.
What does it prove? It proves that I can do something that you don’t believe that anybody can do, and maybe nobody else would care to do. So, you know, I used to tell the kids about a couple of silversmiths. They were both very prominent, and one of them got an envelope and in the envelope was a single thread of silver. It was like one of your hairs. Just to prove that you can draw silver that small. The time went by and now the other guy got an envelope and it was the same thread of silver, but it was hollow.
Hasta aquí un extracto de la entrevista con James Krenov. Recomiendo vivamente uno de sus libros:
James Krenov, A Cabinetmaker’s Notebook (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Co., 1976).
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