Legacy is some project. Initiated by the American Hardwood Export Council (AHEC), it brings together leading designer/makers and some of the UK’s foremost opinion formers; heads of cultural agenda-setting institutions, such as the Science Museum, the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Tate, the Young Vic Theatre and the Royal Opera House.
Each commissioner teamed with a designer to devise a ‘legacy’ piece reflecting the ethos of their organisation. They range across a broad spectrum, from furniture, to an art bookstand, a post box, a tree house and storage solutions. These were then worked up by the designers, with support from leading furniture manufacturer Benchmark at its Kintbury workshop.
Through September the finished articles formed a special exhibition at the V&A as part of the London Design Festival. Since then they have taken up permanent residence at the respective institutions, or at the homes of the commissioners involved.
Core to the project, all the creations are in American red oak – the most abundant and renewable species in the vast US hardwood forest. It’s a point made emphatically by AHEC in its communications for Legacy. These include a book and video interviews with commissioners and designers.
Even by the standards of AHEC’s previous showcase projects for US hardwoods, Legacy is ambitious. It’s set to generate powerful messaging around the sustainability of the hardwood resource generally, and the aesthetic and manufacturing potential of red oak in particular.
But there’s even more to it than that. Legacy forms part, albeit a key one, of a wider, longer-term programme. The aim is to demonstrate red oak’s technical performance through hard data-generating testing and, backed by this, to flag up its creative and commercial possibilities. Combined with studies and tools commissioned and developed by AHEC, evidencing the legality and wider environmental credentials of US hardwoods, it creates a fund of specification information for red oak arguably unmatched in any hardwood species.
AHEC believes now is the time for red oak partly because of Europe’s seemingly insatiable appetite for oak generally.
In the lead up to Legacy AHEC put red oak through a demanding examination of its working properties.
Benchmark dedicated its workshop for a week to evaluating the joinery performance of the species alongside US white and European oak. It was an unprecedented experiment, with AHEC asking the furniture maker to detail how red oak fared, warts and all.
Sean Sutcliffe, managing director and co-founder of Benchmark, admitted that the red oak evaluation was something of a step into the unknown, underlining that European end-users are today less well acquainted with the species.
“I knew it was a very prevalent timber, but I’d been brought up with European white oak as a cabinet-maker and had clients with the same predisposition towards it,” he said. “I had preconceptions about red oak based on anecdotes. In terms of its properties, it’s lighter than European oak so I thought it wasn’t as strong. It’s porous so I knew it steam bent well. But I didn’t know much else.”
Between them the Benchmark craft team putting the three oaks through their paces had over 300-years’ experience. They left no stone unturned. The timber was worked manually as well as using all types of processing technology, including state-of-the-art CNC machining centres.
“We devised 40 tests looking at stiffness, strength, flexibility, stability, joint strength, shock resilience, look, grain pattern, how the timber machined, worked by hand and took finishes,” said Mr Sutcliffe. “Andrew Lawrence, Arup head of timber engineering, also oversaw the mechanical testing to ensure it was credible and serious.”
With red oak sourced from the north and south of the US, the team also evaluated how the different species responded to appearance modification; including bleaching, fuming, staining and scorching. Benchmark subsequently drew up tables, rating the three timbers’ performance in each test.
The trials confirmed that red oak is more variable in appearance than US white and European oak. But in other respects, they proved an ‘eye-opener’.
“They showed strength to weight, red oak is stronger than European oak, probably because it’s more flexible,” said Mr Sutcliffe. “It also bends, glues and joints very well.”
Besides highlighting the versatility of red oak, he added, working with it brought home the potential for using it to make more sustainable use of the forest.
“We can’t afford for fashion to clash with forestry,” he said. “Otherwise foresters end up with 20% of their stock they can’t sell, an environmental and sustainability disaster. Purely commercially, at current price levels it is extremely competitively priced right now. So it represents excellent value to any manufacturer.”
“What was particularly interesting is how red oak’s inherent properties, such as its porosity and bendability, can prove a positive in manufacture,” said David Venables, AHEC’s European director. “The results were also invaluable for the Legacy designer makers. Most were unfamiliar with red oak, and Benchmark’s evaluation did a lot of groundwork for them.”
As part of its integrated red oak campaign, AHEC has also been working with leading Polish designer Tomek Rygalik (TTJ August). The result is his first collection of red oak furniture, which launched at the end of September. As one of the country’s leading creatives, this is set not just to spark interest in the species in the powerhouse Polish furniture sector, but also to send creative ripples across the European marketplace.
Earlier this year, AHEC also commissioned London designer/maker Sebastian Cox to create a red oak piece for the Wallpaper Handmade exhibition in Milan during the Salone del Mobile (TTJ May). The circular Blushing Bar used the timber’s porous open cell structure to pressure inject it with red calligraphy ink, which penetrated to the surface to highlight the grain.
AHEC has also shared its red oak technical and environmental performance work with John Lewis and the outcome is Dovetail, the retailer’s first furniture collection in the timber, designed by Marque Furniture’s Ben Fowler (TTJ August).
In AHEC’s book on Legacy itself, commissioners and designers share their thoughts on the project and its conjunction of design, making and sustainability. Some comments equally apply to the organisation’s wider work with red oak.
London Design Festival chairman Sir John Sorrell was one of the commissioners and worked with AHEC on the project, liaising with fellow commissioners. He encapsulated the essence of the exercise. “The Legacy pieces are inspiring. They will inform people about how design and making work and how great, long-lasting materials are part of the future,” he said. “It’s the way everything has to go because, as human beings, we must be more sustainable and this sets a great example for that.”
In short, some project, some legacy.
