Fabrication First: Find Your Audience

March 1st, 2021

Find Your Audience

A friend of mine is a master wood turner.  He’s shown in galleries and taught hundreds of classes.  He’s the real deal.  A few years ago, I showed him a bowl I had turned and he criticized the bottom for being too flat and said I should put in more of a bevel to give the piece an elegant connection to the table it sat on.  He admitted that most people would never notice but that another turner would see my flat bottom and think that I’m unskilled.

I respect my friend a great deal, but I thought his criticism was weird.

When I make a piece, I try not to think about what other artisans will think.  Of course, we all care about what our peers will say.  Maybe we value their thoughts the most.  But fellow craftspeople can also be self-esteem assassins, pointing out the flaws we’re most insecure about and stealing away the pride we feel in our work.

In 18th and 19th century furniture making, the opinions of other craftspeople played a smaller role.  If you worked in a shop, you had to satisfy the foreman or master.  If you worked by yourself, you probably only worried about the customer.

I did custom work for years and while a few of my clients were unreasonable sticklers, most of them were surprisingly easygoing.  When they saw their custom-made piece come to life, they were delighted and rarely nit-picked tiny details.

But I always thought they would.

Through every step of the build, I would imagine clients seeing microscopic gaps between boards or pointing out nearly invisible scratches in the surface.  I thought they would be laser-focused on the “flaws” and refuse to pay.  But that never happened.

If you do woodwork for a living, the customers are the natural audience.  They are the ones who order the work and pay for it and they must be happy with the result.  Most clients know very little about the craft.  They won’t notice if you sneak a little veneer into a joint to close a gap.  They can’t tell if the dovetails on one drawer are different than the others.  Clients want things to be the right size, the right color, and to work in their homes.  They want chairs that are comfortable, tables that are sturdy, and shelves that hold their books.  They want the finished work to look like the drawing.  Honestly, the clients’ standards are probably the best ones because they force us to focus on the big picture instead of getting mired in the details.

Of course, most of us don’t have clients.  Most of us are in it for the love of the game and we must be our own audience.  This leads to heartache as we mercilessly criticize our own work and paralyze ourselves over tiny mistakes.  When it comes to our own work, we’re a lousy audience.

So I think we should find a better one.

I suggest that any serious craftsperson find someone whose opinion they trust.  This might be another craftsperson, but probably not someone who does what you do.  I know a lot of blacksmiths and I enjoy showing them my work because they have an eye for quality, a good sense of proportion, and they don’t know a damn thing about woodwork, so they don’t obsess about my shoulder-lines or the amount of gloss in my finish.

My favorite audience is my wife.  She does a little knitting, but doesn’t really make things.  She has a background in Art History so her aesthetics are excellent.  My wife thinks about color, shape and proportion.  When she doesn’t like something, she uses useful terms like “too chunky” or “too spindly.” I know what those things mean, and I know how to fix them.

Since I mostly make objects for my own home, my wife has become “the customer.” She’s the one who has to live with the milking stool, the blanket chest, the side table.  She’s also the decorator of our house.  She picks the colors, buys the rugs, and hangs the drapes.  I have very little input on these things because I don’t care.  The walls can be any color so long as they aren’t pink.  The furniture I don’t build can be anything so long as it’s comfortable.  What do I think of that couch?  I think it’s long enough for me to lie down on.  Buy it.

Here’s a scene that happens over and over in my house: I bring my wife down into the shop to show her a piece that’s nearly done.  I bite my lip while she looks it over and then tells me she likes it.  Then comes the confessional; the moment when I point out the massive flaw that’s ruining the whole thing.  I show her the crooked leg or the gappy joint.  She leans in.  She squints at whatever I’m pointing to.  Then she turns and looks at me like I’ve lost my mind.  She usually says something like, “I literally can’t even see what you’re talking about.  It’s all in your head.  Relax.” She’s saved more than a few pieces by just telling me to calm down.

I think everyone needs an audience like mine.  You need someone who cares, someone who will tell you when the work is actually bad.  But you also need someone divorced from the details.  You are the technician.  You should be the one obsessing over the finer points.  Not your audience.

That’s not their job.  It’s yours.