“Kirby On Design: A woodworking legend shares his thoughts” by Ellis Walentine

Design is a word that is not well understood by laymen, including woodworkers and other artisans. It is often thought of in terms of the outcome, some tangible result, when in fact it is a problem-solving process that predetermines the outcome, before the first cuts are made. Deciding how a piece should look -- the aesthetic aspect of design -- is particularly challenging for many of us. We can all make things if we know what to make; but designing them, both functionally and aesthetically, requires different skill sets. Ian would point out that the design process can be frustrating and confusing. Developing design skills takes as long or longer than becoming thoroughly proficient as a furniture maker. 

Over the years, the Wood Central forums have seen many conversations about design, including a recent one on our main "Messages" forum that was prompted by an article written by designer/craftsman/educator Ian Kirby entitled "Making Is Not Designing," which appeared in the June 2020 issue of Woodshop News. In that article Kirby takes the IWF to task for the way it runs the student furniture design competition. His point is that a competition must have a clearly defined and stated design problem. In this way each solution to the problem and each piece of furniture made is of the same ilk. 

He goes on to offer what a chair design problem would look like and to point out that when the judges have made their decision we can judge the judges.

As well, he describes the design process and its role in the creation of furniture and other objects.

I spoke with Ian about our visitors' interest in learning to design, and I invited him to join the conversation on the message board. He agreed to read the back-and-forth and to figure out how best to respond. Shortly thereafter, he sent me a thoughtful reply to share with our visitors. It looked like a magazine article waiting to happen, so I sent an edited copy to my friend Ron Goldman, editor of Woodworker West magazine. Since I have a bi-monthly column in Woodworker West, we decided to run excerpts of the message board discussions in my column "News & Views" and to include Ian's response as a brief article further on in the issue. 

Ian and I go back a long way. I was already well aware of his work and his teachings back in the early days of Fine Woodworking magazine in the late 70s, and first saw him in person at the landmark woodworking show at Madison Square Garden in New York City in 1981. His articles on woodworking and design put him among those at the forefront of the widespread craftsmanship renaissance in the United States during that period. 

When I came to American Woodworker magazine in 1992, I was intent on adding more sophisticated and design content to the magazine. So, one of my first initiatives was to look up Ian Kirby and see if I could coax him to consider writing for us.  I caught up with him at Palomar College in California where he had been teaching for a couple of years.

I walked into his workshop unannounced one rainy spring evening and eventually convinced him to write a series of articles about the basics of wood and construction, which expanded into hand made drawer making and his inexpensive and simple but rock-solid workbench design, among others. Ian wrote these with John Kelsey, retired editor of Fine Woodworking after they had founded Cambium Books. We published about a dozen articles in the 90s. Ian and I have been good friends ever since.

Lo, these many years later, Ian is still at it, working daily in his workshop in Connecticut, designing and building amazing woodworking tours de force. He has designed and renovated his home and property in his own inimitable style including building a large addition, and doing all the architectural and interior design himself. In his spare time, he has completed monumental furniture projects for clients and is working on furniture designs for production. Now, at the young age of 88, he has just launched a new website, IanKirbyDesign.com as a repository for his past, present and future accomplishments. We should all be as productive.

Ellis Walentine