Tim Stead MBE (1952-2000)
In a career that spanned 30 years, Tim Stead carved out a niche as one of the most uniquely gifted and influential furniture designers in the UK.  In addition to pushing the boundaries and the exploring the possibilities of wood in his furniture and sculptural pieces, Tim Stead also enjoyed the distinction of being a community woodlands pioneer, with the founding in 1986 of the Borders Community Woodland.  Stead subsequently co-founded, with Eoin Cox, the Borders Forest Trust and the Woodschool in Jedburgh 1996. 

In the following interview Tim Stead’s widow Maggy speaks to Caroline Ednie about Tim’s life and work - and his unique legacy.

This is the first comprehensive look at the life and career of Tim Stead.  How did the exhibition and accompanying publication materialise?

(Maggy Stead) The concept for the exhibition started four years ago.  I was clearing Tim’s workshop (based at the Stead family home in Blainslie) and I thought that it was really sad that so much of Tim’s work was under a pile of sawdust and rags, so I thought it would be really nice to exhibit it all together as a show.  At the time Giles Sutherland was interested in writing another book on Tim’s work – so it became clear that organising an exhibition with an accompanying catalogue would be a very good idea.

The Royal Botanic Garden is such a perfect setting, and Alan Bennell (Head of External Affairs) who has taken the whole thing forward, worked with Tim on the Botanic Ash exhibition at the RBG in 1993, so there is a lovely symmetry.

Can you describe how the exhibition presents Tim’s life and work?

The idea in terms of the presentation is that it is like entering a forest.  The display elements and the texts are all presented vertically to give this impression.  And Tim’s work is displayed chronologically.  The first exhibit is a table that Tim created whilst he was a student at Glasgow Art School in 1975.  It was made from reclaimed timber and was Tim’s first furniture piece in wood.  The table features in the ‘Please Touch’ section of the exhibition, which is about encouraging people to engage with Tim’s pieces.  It is designed to be very hands-on because these sculptural Burr Elm sculptures that Tim made, and which reveals the layers and the beauty of the timber, really have to be handled to be enjoyed. 

Did Tim always intend to specialise in wood? 

Actually, Tim explored many different materials whilst he was studying sculpture at Glasgow School of Art.  He went to art school in the days of minimalism and conceptualism, and he preferred to work with big pieces, but his first experiment with wood was the large scale Chess Set (1974).  Tim was a very good chess player - he could think four five six moves ahead – and he made lots of chess sets over his career.  The last one he made our son Sam has now got.  The first Chess Set is where he started experimenting with wood and then it became a lifelong passion.  He then developed the same obsession with planting wood as using wood.  Tim’s life then became wood, wood, wood! 

After creating the first chess board, Tim immediately started receiving commissions.  Tim had a dream – he wanted to live in the country, have a workshop, a garden and a family.  He really is a sculptor but thought that he couldn’t really live from being a sculptor so he created sculptures on legs!  He wasn’t trained as a furniture maker but rather as a sculptor, and you can see that from his work. 

This sculptural quality can be seen particularly in pieces such as the early Skeletal Chair (1984) in sycamore.  The throne that Tim designed for Pope John Paul II, for his visit to Scotland in 1981, is also very sculptural as well as being very big and very daring.  These aspects of his work has been imitated a lot.  I believe Tim did shape a whole generation of furniture makers.  Whilst we call Mackintosh imitators Mockintosh, Tim’s imitators are known as ‘Instead’ rather than Tim Stead!

Tim also emphasised comfort too, didn’t he?

Tim felt that there was always a dilemma and puzzle for the furniture maker – how could you make a chair look good but also make it comfortable.  But all of Tim’s chairs ARE comfortable.  One of the first chairs he designed, the high back chair, made whilst Tim was still at art school, is the master of all chairs, and it’s beautifully comfortable.  It is made from mahogany, and at this time Tim was using timber that he got free from Gilmour and Aitken of Glasgow.  The mahogany is beautiful, but then when Tim heard about the deforestation of the rainforest he stopped using it.  When we moved to the Borders he started working with native hardwood.  He then fell in love with ash and elm.
He was against the principle of using trees and not re-planting them – he believed we should value trees. 

As a result of this philosophy Tim pioneered ventures such as Axes for Trees – how did this work?

The wooden axes Tim made in 1986, he created with the idea that with the proceeds he would buy some land.  As a result, with his friends, he helped create the first community woodland in Scotland. 

The axe heads are more sculptural than functional pieces, but I suppose I could kill you with one if I wanted!  But they are meant to be symbolic of Man as the husband of the earth.  And although the axe chops down trees, it can also be seen as a tool to create houses and furniture, and allow you to re-plant.  The first trees were planted in the Borders Community Woodland in 1986.  This eventually led to the creation of the Borders Forest Trust and the Woodschool in Jedburgh in 1996.

One of Tim’s highest profile commissions was for the North Sea Oil Industries Memorial Chapel in the Kirk of St Nicholas, Aberdeen (1989) which he created in the wake of the Piper Alpha disaster.  Can you describe this commission and Tim’s approach?

The ‘Strata’ pieces are from the very big commission to furnish the Chapel in Aberdeen.  Tim made a series of chairs, the communion table and the screen.  The idea of the ‘Strata’ design is that it echoes the geological strata of the earth.  The initials of the wood used in the strata also spells out the words ‘We remember you’ (walnut, elm/ rowan, elm, maple, elm, maple, beech, elm rowan and a thin strip of yew).  The wood pieces fit well into those big stone buildings – the warm wood contrasts with the cold stone.  With wood, after you touch it for a few seconds, it has acquired the temperature of your body.  There is nothing between you and the wood – just a thin layer of oil.  It feels like skin.

Tim’s high back chair has been compared to the work of CR Mackintosh.  Do you think this is valid? 

There has been talk of a Mackintosh resemblance with the high back chair but I don’t think so, because you can’t sit on Mackintosh chairs!  Seriously, I think the fact that it has a high back is where the similarity begins and ends.  I think Tim is a completely novel designer. 

In terms of the way that Tim designed, he had his arse between two chairs, so to speak!  He was neither a craftsman nor an artist.  He was both, and he was so complete.  Tim didn’t call himself a furniture maker or a sculptor, or a craftsman.  He called himself an object maker, or a husband of the earth.  He was at harmony with his world.  He always said ‘I have done no harm, I use wood, but I re-plant wood, there is no waste.’  In fact Tim made floors with waste materials. 

And from what would normally be used as fire wood, Tim made wonderful sculptural pieces.  In1989 he eased off the commissions a bit and went back to his first love, which was sculpture.  He had a show in the Compass Gallery in Glasgow in 1990 which featured these big lumps of firewood, accompanied by notes urging people to ‘Please Touch’.  You assume you can do nothing with firewood apart from burn it, but Tim explored what was inside each lump of wood.  Each piece reveals a shape that is so dynamic.  They are also so tactile and visual, and smell so nice too.  Some of Tim’s carvings and engravings are exquisite and reveal such wonderful qualities.  Tim let the wood direct him - he didn’t go in with a strategy to carve these pieces.  To him they were like doodling.  Doodling with a band saw!  They are very popular with children and visually impaired people because of their texture and tactile qualities.

The Navigator’s Table also on show is made from what is essentially a lump of firewood too.  But Tim maintained that the sycamore tree took 250 years to grow and has the most amazing grain, so rather than try to hide the imperfections he made a feature out of them.  He has used bronze inlay and wood ‘stitching’ in the details. 

Tim’s work, although highly individual, never appears insular.  Do you agree with this assertion?

Tim liked to be involved with other craftsmen and artists.  He liked collaborating with others and tried for many years to create a Scottish Craft Centre.  Tim also took part in the group of companies that formed The Tent Company in the 1980’s (Stead was Director from 1981-89).

Tim always liked to build on a big scale and having tried unsuccessfully to work with architects, he was always keen to take on big projects of his own.  The four poster bed that features in the exhibition is one of these large scale projects.  The way I perceived it is that architects work with formula whereas Tim was much more intuitive in the way he works.  Tim wanted to be involved in the bigger picture, rather than just the furniture – he wanted to take on window sills, wall planes, he wanted to be involved in every aspect of the architecture.  In our house (The Steading, Blainslie) he has created everything in wood from light switches to toilet seats.  I am very lucky because he let me buy a real toilet!! 

The garden furniture that appears outside the exhibition was designed by Tim as part of a project in 1982 called Art and Craft and Architecture.  He received a grant from the SDA for £3,000 and spent 2 years researching and adapting his ideas with a view to making his individual furniture designs suitable for mass production.  He would have liked to sell his design to B&Q.  The pieces in the garden are made from cast iron and iroko.  They are so durable – they’ve been outside in our garden since 1982 and they still look great. 

The work that Tim created latterly is unusual, more abstract.  Can you describe how these evolved?

Tim’s work is all about exploration.  The pieces on the wall are the last pieces he did over the final three years of his life when he was very weak.  He described them as drawings in wood.  They are sculptural but flat.  If you look at his notebooks he was doodling all the time, in planes, on trains, in the pub even, he was always doodling.  The shapes depicted in these ‘wood drawings’ are shapes that had been appearing in his doodles over the years.  Before, when Tim had been busy completing his commissions he never had time to indulge in his doodles, but when he had to work less in the workshop, he got into these doodles.

What Tim really also got into in a big, big way were these wood sculptures, that he called ‘excavations’.  He had a real fascination for exploring scale.  One of these late wood sculptures called ‘Cove’ almost resembles a Moroccan rock dwelling, or these churches in Ethiopia that are excavated out of the rock.  It is tantalising as it draws you in and Tim saw these spaces as places that had been abandoned.  They held the suggestion that somebody had been there at some point but they have since gone.  It’s about loss and even death.  He explored these themes in these works and he’d then photograph them.  They are beautiful photographs which create the illusion that these formations could be 40 metres high – or even 4 mm high. 

Tim was so extraordinary – I calculated that he started creating at the age of 18 and he died at 48, and for 30 years he worked non-stop.  He didn’t like holidays – his work was his pleasure.  Tim even had time to write a short stage piece which is being performed here (four performances) at the Royal Botanic Garden during the Edinburgh Festival.  It’s a Samuel Beckett kind of play called ‘The Man in the Large Checked Suit’.  It has been performed once in 1972 in Trent, Nottingham.  At the time he wrote it he was making his own clothes.  He had this thing about not buying clothes, so he made his own, including a leather coat.  He couldn’t do zips so he used string.  The only thing he did buy was his Doc Martens!!!!!  He was a wonderful, unique individual.  

A celebration of the life and work of Tim Stead - With the Grain, The Life and Legacy of Tim Stead - is on at the Exhibition Hall, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh from 27 June until 4 September 2005 and then in the Benmore Gallery, Benmore Botanic Garden, near Dunoon, Argyll from 16 September until 31 October 2005.