Søren Ulrich

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Søren Ulrich was at northmodern in August to show his furniture along with a display of the large selection of high-quality carpentry and cabinet-making tools that he sells through his company.

His furniture is made with great attention to the character and grain of the timbers he uses and his work has, of course, the quality that you would expect from a hugely experienced and skilled craftsman.

The style of his furniture is interesting - not looking back to usual sources of inspiration in the ‘classical’ period of modern Danish design from the 1960s and 1970s but a step further back to look at vernacular furniture for inspiration … to the best of everyday Danish furniture … to the simple, practical, well-made furniture of farmhouses, and working homes and to the sort of furniture that must have filled the many apartments built in Copenhagen after 1870.

For the shapes of the backs to chairs or for the form or construction details of legs or frames - these pieces are reminiscent of furniture from 1900 or 1910. This is robust, well-made, long-lasting furniture that makes use of the best carpentry techniques, for forming frames and for finishing the pieces, but makes it relevant to a modern home rather than being simply a copy or reproduction.

Søren Ulrich

 

 

the carpentry tools:

Part of the display at northmodern included a section of the trunk from an oak tree that had been split down the middle and was used as a display surface for a selection of high-quality wood-working tools.

A friend with some woodland had offered Søren an oak that was about to be felled but he accepted on the condition that he could cut down the tree himself, using a traditional axe, wanting to take the timber through all the stages from the standing tree to the finished furniture … but, he confessed to me that, half way through cutting down the tree, he began to feel that maybe it was one of the toughest jobs he had ever undertaken.

 

Treen

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The old English word for household items such as spoons and kitchen utensils that are made out of wood is TREEN … a word that also implies woodworking that was possibly undertaken outdoors, out in the woods, but was certainly the sort of task undertaken in the farm or village workshop.

At northmodern Søren Ulrich had a large squared-off block of timber that was standing upright as part of his display. It had a series of round holes drilled carefully and deliberately in a line just below the top.

While Søren was answering questions from someone else I stood looking at the block - curious and slightly perplexed. Given that there were a number of clamps on or near the block Søren must have thought I was either rather naive or even pretty thick when I asked what the holes were for. He took up one of the clamps and instead of a pad at the opposite end to the part that screwed in and out - the sort of clamp I have used - there was a prong or spike pointing horizontally out which was slotted into one of the holes and then the screw part tightened down to clamp a piece of wood … so in fact this block of timber was a transportable work bench to be used for carving.

 

Recently, Søren has made a range of wooden bowls and spoons and ladles and so on … treen. Some of these were in the display at northmodern with various pieces of wood showing the different stages of the production … the first a roughly-shaped piece of wood, the second after an initial work with a plane, the next marked out with the shape of the proposed implement in pencil. As, at that point, there was no one else wanting to speak to Søren, he picked up one of the marked out pieces and clamped it to the top of the bench and started deftly to form a spoon. 

It was hardly surprising that, as he worked, a crowd formed to watch but I tried to take photographs of the sequence.

Søren used a series of gauges and chisels to hollow out the shape, quickly swapping from one to the next, supporting the piece with a thumb as he cut down and round, using the angle of his body to lean into the cut, using body weight to provide the force but his hands to guide the cutting edge.

 

This must have been much like it would have been watching a village carpenter in the 19th century or the 18th century or the 17th or, in fact, any country carpenter back through the Middle Ages supplementing his income and using smaller pieces or off-cuts of wood between the jobs for local families making them benches or tables or chests.  

That’s not to say that the spoons and bowls and ladles made by Søren Ulrich are some sort of charming curiosity of a rural craft that is more part of a museum demonstration than anything else because the shapes and forms of his pieces are distinctly modern … just that they are very much part of a long and admirable tradition.

 

 

the finished work

PLAIN CRAFTS at northmodern

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In looking at the strong position of Danish design right now it is not just about the huge amount of talent coming out of the design schools here but it is about young designers, with drive and determination, setting up new companies to produce their works and it is about new designers and makers without formal design education but with self confidence and a real belief in what they can and will design.

But the foundation ... the base for all this great design ... is in the appreciation of high product quality and a surviving underpinning of craftsmanship.

Yesterday I met Søren Ulrich and his two apprentices from Plaincrafts here in Copenhagen.

 

 

Current furniture design and production is certainly not just about tradition, and certainly not about living off a past design history, but nor is it just about a blinkered view of what now and the future should be like. It is important to bring the skills and achievements of the last century through to make them not just a starting point but a relevant base for what is done next, learning from the achievements of previous generations but looking at their work critically. In that, the apprenticeship system has an important role.