About George Gold
There is always a better thing to make and there is always a better way to make it.
So I never set out to be a furniture maker. I got into furniture making to more properly execute the ideas I was having at art school and this required that I improve my making skills. I’m still very proud of the desk and chair from my degree show at Bath College in the early 1990's but they could have been better made.
While still at art school I spent part of a summer wandering around southern Spain and being particularly drawn to Christian churches being built over the top of earlier Moorish places of worship - leaving intact Mosques sitting inside Cathedrals. A sight I’ll never forget.
The thing I was seeing here was the clash of two totally different styles in the same building. It got me thinking about doing the same thing with furniture. I'd recently been through two airports to get to the Alhambra cathedral/mosque I was standing in – so why not make a piece of furniture which looked like it was a product of two different institutions like a departure lounge and a church for example? All furniture has its iconography and grammar, the 'uniform' it wears which tells you that it belongs where you see it: banks, schools, hospitals, etc, but what happens when you mix these up?
After finishing my art degree I took a 'City & Guilds' furniture making course in Leeds. This was furniture making for industry who needed their new employees to know the essentials of traditional bench-work as well as more mass-production type skills. I was about 23 and there were a lot of 16-year-olds (mainly called Garry) a few retired gents and not much else. I had very good tutors and learned things which I still use every day.
Sharing a workshop in London with 3 other furniture makers was as much of a learning experience. One had been a theoretical maths student and did everything in a way I've never seen before or since. But this is how you learn. I've worked on building sites, been an on-set carpenter for film and T.V. shows, a ship's carpenter and I’ve trained to teach design and technology in school …and I thought I was going to be an artist… Learning to make furniture conventionally, made me realise there was more satisfaction and challenge in producing the real thing than an artistic approximation of it, and I stayed with it.
Some pieces feel like they make themselves and others need to be wrestled into existence. From art school to now I remain motivated by the belief that there is always a better thing to make and there is always a better way to make it.
George has an incredibly thoughtful approach to finding a new solution to a small space or to a reimagining of a classic object such as the stool, the music stand, dining table, lamp stands, storage units - the list goes on. His work is always so imaginative whilst been practical, functional and ergonomic. All of these incredible designs are lovingly made by hand by George in North Yorkshire. All are truly sustainable, desirable and functional.
Polly
