Here you can read articles about Norman Mackay and Woodeye Furniture, which were originally published in newspapers and magazines.
Look What I made in the Tinkling Shed
Article about the Woodeye Piano
A MUSICIAN and woodworker is combining his twin passions with a new album – featuring a piano he made himself.
Norman Mackay is to release The Inventor next month at an event which will also see him showcase his latest woodworking project The Woodeye Piano. The upright piano has been built using Scottish elm.
It is played by fellow Scottish musician Phil Alexander on the album, which will be launched at The Caves in Edinburgh on December 3.
Originally from Nairn, Mackay set up Woodeye Furniture in 2010 at his base in rural East Lothian. He has also made an accordion coffee table.
He said: ‘I just wondered if I could incorporate an accordion into a piece of furniture, then I thought about attaching a drawer to each end of the bellows, then putting the whole mechanism into a coffee table.’
When music meets wood
From Good Woodworking magazine, Issue 311, November 2016
Influenced by his love of wood, music and nature, Norman Mackay has carved himself a niche by creating truly bespoke pieces of furniture.
The above headline may leave some readers scratching their heads, and rightly so, but that’s just what Scottish accordionist, composer and furniture maker Norman Mackay does. Fusing his passion for making music with his successful band ‘Norman Mackay’s Ceilidh Experience’, this maker uses these influences to create pieces of furniture that truly are remarkable. Some of you may have seen his ‘Accordion Coffee Table’, which was featured on our news pages some months ago, but he also has plans to create a musical furniture exhibition, which sounds extremely fun and above all, superbly inventive. I’ll come back to both of these themes later in the profile.
Upon seeing more of his standard pieces of furniture (i.e. those that are purely functional and don’t contain any musical elements), what strikes me is the truly organic nature of every single item. These are pieces that would fit a country cottage perfectly but would be equally at home in pretty much any setting, such is their unique nature and appeal. I can honestly say that I have never seen pieces like these before – Norman really has carved himself a niche for creating pieces of furniture that are 100% bespoke and one-of-a-kind. I love the fact that they are not trying to be contemporary – this maker has stayed true to his roots and is creating heirloom pieces that I’m sure will be treasured and admired for many generations to come.
Background
A former student of the Chippendale International School of Furniture in East Lothian, Scotland, Norman himself was brought up on a farm near Cawdor, Nairnshire, which is some 200 miles away. Norman tells me that growing up, he always dabbled with joinery but it was furniture making that really interested him. ‘I used to occasionally meet furniture makers and think, ‘I’d love to do that’, then I’d do a Google search for furniture making courses,’ he says. ‘One day I did a search and came across The Chippendale International School Of Furniture; it looked perfect, and was only 20 miles from Edinburgh, which was where I was living at the time.’ He arranged a meeting with School principal and founder Anselm Fraser, who over his 30-year tenure, has managed to turn the School into a bustling woodworking community, and Norman consequently signed up. ‘It was a very intensive nine months,’ he comments, ‘we were in the workshop for 50 hours most weeks and I left weekends free for gigs with the band.’ Despite the fact the course was very full on, not to mention being a very steep learning curve for him, completing the full course in this time frame worked perfectly for Norman.
Since completing the course, which covered a basic introduction to all of the main woodworking techniques as well as chosen areas which Norman decided to specialise in and develop, he has set up his own furniture making business ‘Woodeye Furniture’, operating from workshop incubation space at the School, and the success of the business continues to grow and grow.
Furniture & music
Describing his work as ‘fusing traditional cabinetmaking with modern technology and innovative, contemporary design,’ I was curious as to how Norman came up with the idea of combining furniture and music. He explains that ‘honestly, it was just a random idea,’ but one which really is brilliant, and above all, works! ‘I just wondered if I could incorporate an accordion into a piece of furniture’ he says, ‘then I thought about the possibilities of attaching a drawer to each end of the bellows, then putting the whole mechanism into a coffee table. The internal workings are placed inside the table and when the drawers are opened or closed, the accordion plays the chords of Amelie!’ He also thought about possible ways of constructing the piece and eventually found some time to build it.
In terms of other plans to incorporate the two mediums, Norman says that he has quite a few commissioned pieces to work on at present, but his long-term plan, as touched on earlier, is to create a musical furniture exhibition, which he will work on piece by piece whenever he finds the time – so more of a side project, I suppose. ‘The next piece I have in mind is a ‘Woodeye Piano’, which I’ll hopefully have time to make sometime next year,’ he says. I literally cannot wait to see how it works!
Inspiration in nature
Moving on to the question of inspirational sources, Norman says that while he was studying at the School, the students visited The Workshop of Tim Stead, a furniture maker whose patrons included galleries, castles, cathedrals and the Pope. Working from the Scottish Borders, Tim’s projects ranged from high art to public seating, and he was also known to combine the two. Largely unrecognised by the English art world, Tim’s work sits in thousands of homes throughout Europe.
Norman tells me that he was particularly impressed by the kitchen, which he described as “amazing and completely mad, with every surface covered in beautiful wood.” He particularly loved the style of Tim’s work but he comments that he really is influenced by everything that surrounds him, be it nature, trees, woodworkers, musicians and designers. “I love watching films of masters at work, people such as the great Sam Maloof. There is also a range of really nice documentaries that are available online and they’re always inspiring to watch.”
Picking up on Norman’s love of nature, I wondered how his surroundings influenced his work: “Living in rural East Lothian, you have space to get away from everything and just create furniture. There is no mobile phone reception, which is kind of a good thing. I always find that when I’m busy in the workshop working on a furniture commission, I tend up being much more creative with my music, too. I rarely listen to music in the workshop; I usually take advantage of the quiet space to work on new musical ideas.” Norman tells me that he’s always writing manuscript on pieces of wood or whistling ideas into his phone and gets the accordion out as soon as he arrives home so he can turn these new ideas into furniture material.
Norman’s love of nature also influences the raw materials he chooses to use to make his pieces. He loves oak and elm, especially the pieces with burrs, and he uses these natural characteristics to great effect, working with them to help add curves and patterns to his builds. From plank to piece of furniture, the process Norman employs really is very organic.
Design process
Working mostly to commission requires Norman to have a very clear idea of how a piece is executed from start to finish. Meeting with the client over a coffee is the first step, as well as getting to know them and chatting about what they’re looking for – the process really is very personal – and once this is pinned down, Norman usually checks out the space in which the piece of furniture is destined to go, then once he has the necessary information and a feel for what the client is looking for, he’ll go away and draw some 3D designs before emailing them across. “This is usually followed by another meeting and maybe some changes are made to the designs,” he says, “and once the client is happy with the drawings, it’s a 50% deposit and we’ll order the wood and start creating the piece of furniture. Usually I’ll email some images of the timber and progress photos, just to give them a better idea of the process involved. I think this is important as a lot of people have difficulty understanding how it actually works; they’re used to instant purchases and they find it hard to comprehend why it takes so long.” Once the client realises that Norman is literally starting from just a stack of rough planks, they begin to understand just how much work is involved. Each piece Norman makes typically requires between 80-100 hours of work, but if the piece involves a lot of curves, then this can easily add an extra 40-50 hours on top of this.
As much as he is grateful for every commission he undertakes, Norman can’t help but admit that, where possible, he does prefer working to his own design; ‘For me, that’s the whole point of creating something.’ He comments.
Seeing each item he makes as a functional piece of art which the owner will have for life, Norman says that it’s quite amazing, when working on a new piece of furniture, to think that over 100 years from now, somebody, somewhere will have his work in their house and will still be opening and closing the drawers and doors.
The Chippendale School workshop
Working from the Chippendale School’s workshop, which he shares with several other former students, means that Norman does have a lot of great machinery and tools at his disposal, which is a definite positive. Safety is always at the top of his agenda and when working with big machines, he always uses push-sticks, wears eye and ear defenders, gloves and dust masks – in fact, every safety prop he can possibly lay his hands on. ‘Being a musician, the most important thing is not to put my fingers near any dangerous blades,’ he says, ‘so I always consider my safety in the workshop.’
From a small business perspective, Norman says that you have to think carefully about your time and while he enjoys using hand tools, machines are essential as they make all the necessary processes much faster. ‘If you’re going to get anywhere with a woodworking business, you just can’t keep up to speed with hand tools alone,’ he says.
In terms of how he sees the furniture making industry developing, Norman says he’d like to think that more people will be setting up their own small businesses, and as he rightly says: ‘You get as much better service and product from a small business run by someone who passionately interested in their job and customers.’
Woodworker creates anti-moth furniture
From East Lothian Courier, 7 April 2016
A WOODWORKER has created a special range of furniture which could stop clothes from becoming eaten by moths. Norman Mackay, a graduate of the Chippendale International School of Furniture, runs Woodeye Furniture, from incubation space at the school, near Gifford. Norman is busy working on a range of bespoke elm furniture with cedar drawer bottoms, with the oil in cedar killing moth larvae and stopping clothes from being targeted.
‘Moths are secretive little beasties and don’t much like the light, which is why they just love nice, dark drawers in which to lay their eggs,’ explained Norman. ‘They particularly like to munch on things like wool or fur but, having expensive tastes, don’t touch anything common like synthetics.’
A loud table, accordion to Norman
Feature about the Chippendale interantional School of Furniture
Pull out the drawer of a table and you rather expect it to glide out quietly and smoothly. Not so with Norman Mackay’s coffee table, made from Scottish elm (Ulmus glabra) and fitted with the internal workings of an accordion. You can see – and hear! – on his website. Norman, a graduate of the Chippendale International School of Furniture, runs Woodeye Furniture from incubation space at the School and combines a woodworking career with life as a musician.
A Highlander by birth, Norman has played the button accordion from an early age and plays with Norman Mackay’s Ceilidh Experience, a fusion band that mixes up the traditional with modern rock.
Norman has appeared on radio and TV and a film for which he wrote music was featured at the Cannes Film Festival. ‘A diatonic reed block was used for the drawer’s ‘voice’ and limited to two chords – one out and one in. After much thought, I decided to go for Amen. The only other options I could think of were the theme tunes to Jaws and Psycho, which I didn’t fancy much,’ says Norman.
His hand-crafted table can be made to order, taking up to eight weeks to construct and other musical furniture ideas are in the pipeline. Musical chairs, perhaps?
