Life & work: Sten Clod Poulsen Designer and craftsman www.poulsenwoodwork.dk

Address Fruegade 19 B, DK-4200 Slagelse. Tlf. 0045 31507047 – info@metaconsult.dk , CVR 31909759. The Danish Bank in Slagelse account 4406 0085650.

At present what I do is to design and make eksclusive luxury “arts & crafts” objects. Some of them very practical – shoehorn, clothes hanger and bootjack – and some of them just decorative. I am 74 years old and have earlier had a completely different career.

In english the word ”clod” is a derogatory term for a fool, at primitive person. In early ironage danish language “en klode” was the result of the first raw melting of bog iron, which in Denmark was a very important source of iron in the early iron age. “En klode” in other words is a raw lump of iron, soil, stones etc. Funny enough my first name is “Sten” which means “stone/rock”. So in a primitive translation my name means: Stone – raw lump of iron – son of Poul. I am very satisfied with that name.

I was brought up in a climate of communism (father), Freudian educational ideas (mother) and a tradition of art – my grandfathers vocation was art paintings.

In the years around the time I went to the danish high/secondary school “gymnasium” I in parallel with doing my homework started making small wooden objects with a lot of motherly (overdimensioned) praise. This encouraged me to continue and in a scope of 4-5 years I progressed from primitive figures to jewelry in overseas wood types and ivory (at that time legal to buy) and threedimensional figures that won some respect from people visiting our home. I worked with ebony and rosewood (rio) and ivory with silver dots in the jewelry. My products were sold through private relations.

My last sketches from those years is dated 1961, the year I graduated from the gymnasium and started to study psychology at the university. Gradually this education took my time and gradually my arts & craft activities subsided. Later when I graduated from the University of Copenhagen and had my first daughter and was married the arts & craft activities had stopped years ago.

But occasionally they reappeared in my mind as a memory of a part of myself, I had left behing. I was

not a complete person. I missed working with my hands and physical material. In the following decades I several times tried to build a new workshop, but lacked the motivation and time to follow it through. My two daughters, wife, friends, work naturally filled my daily life. My work in educational research and later as an independent educational consultant (www.metaconsult.dk / www.læringiskolen.dk ) – took my energy and time. (Læringiskolen means the pupils psychological learning processes in school. I was – and I am – an expert in learning processes, have written several books about my ideas and have developed an independent theory which I hopefully will publish).

In the gymnasium I very much was in doubt as to whether I should become a professional designer and craftsman or I should pursue an academic career. My parents helped me to short apprenticeships (weeks) in two different woodworking companies. However I was scared away by the rough and authoritarian culture. I was much too – oversensitive – to endure it.

The ”child centered” freudian upbringing and a private creative-child- centered small school had a completely different caring and respectful practice.

Before choosing psychology as my field of study (my mothers lifes interest) I participated in a three weeks assessment process in order to become an architect but I was not sufficiently good at naturalistic drawing and left the test-period before it concluded. This I later regretted. However I have been a reasonable competent and creative researcher and consultant in my chosen field of educational psychology.

I was very much in doubt in my late teens as to how good my designs and wooden products actually was. My level of competence in other words. I almost had my things accepted at Copenhagens most prestiged design shop ”Den permanente”. However they – rightly – doubted that I probably couldn’t deliver a steady supply of quality products. I sensed their doubt and gave up.

In my jewelry I developed a “layer technique” gluing for instance a layer of ebony on top of at layer of rosewood (Rio Rosewood, at that time legal to buy

and use), then grinding most of the wood away until an elegant two-coloured form was obtained.

I was very interested in the new and internationally acclaimed modern Danish furnitures like for instance “The chair” in which J. Kennedy sat in a TV duel with R. Nixon. And I am still much inspired by the subtle elegance, the flowing lines in the profiles and the high quality of the craftsmanship from that period – the 1960´ties and following decade. Today chairs and tables etc. from that period is a very modern “retro” movement and the furniture from the period is sold at auctions for exorbitant sums of money.

The Danish idea of “good design” integrating the physical material (wood, metal, plastic) with the function and with the aesthetics creating beautiful and very practical objects. This philosophy was deeply ingrained in my mind and hands and bones.

In the following decades of my life I didn’t excel in arts and crafts, but were very active in building and planting in home and garden personally and occasionally with my daugters. I enjoyed very much to work physically and using my hands and brain producing changes. Aesthetics were constantly

important. The end result shouldn’t just be durable and useful: It should also be beautiful.

In my home in Slagelse (99 kilometer from Copen-hagen) I in 2007 when furnishing my home office integrated a workbench. The dream was still alive. In the following years the workbench disappeared under mounds of paper, but – it was there.

In the following years the consultancy work gradually subsided – many very skillful consultants had entered the field of education with new concepts of organizational and managerial development . My interest in the learning process of the pupils were not in the foreground of the flow of funds to the politically chosen development agendas in the schools. And I could begin to use my pension. In this new economy – pension and occasional consultancy work – I had more time on my hands than before.

In 2015 I designed and constructed several woodworking places inside and outside of our house so I can vary my place of working after the weather and the phase of making the woodcraft. Including a workbench in our summer house, so I can take the woodcrafting activities with me.

When I in 1986 moved to Slagelse – after a tragic divorce and three years in a danish collective for stranded adults – it was because I met Linda, my love and my wife. One day when she was absent I bought our present home – at that time a primitive ruin. She was not happy but endured the following 15 years where we rebuilded and modernized two adjacent buildings.

Becoming of necessity a part time craftsman – timber, masonry etc – I met the world of crafts again, buying services from local trained experts. I observed their work, I observed the machinery they used, I gradually became better at talking with them, sometimes working together with them. Sometimes

I even got their respect for my contributions. From those meetings I moved on to local stores for craftsmen buying my own machinery and building materials.

I had changed from being a career scientist at the university to being an independent consultant. I now knew what it meant to have your own business – with license to go bankrupt at any time. There was a common ground of understanding of the basic conditions of existence between me and the craftsmen. .

In the summer of 2015 – I realized, that I could reopen my life as designer and crafsman myself. I build the above mentioned workplaces and I engaged in a number of expeditions to timber merchants alle over Denmark specializing in exotic woods from all over the globe. I found my old drawings and scethes from the 1960 period and started again. It was a very moving and difficult experience. Time and time again I surprised discovered that my hands still remembered how to work and shape the wood: An activity I almost hadn’t touched upon in 55 years.

At this time Linda and I had developed a wonderful hobby of buying all kinds of used objects at flea markets and other kinds of comparable sales. This meant that I in a period of the following two years could furnish my several workbenches with parallel sets of machinery and hand tools. Very important because it means I can literally shift between the different workspaces only needing to bring with me the object I am presently working on. These old and used used hand tools and electric machines I have combined with new semiprofessional machines.

Producing my arts & crafts objects is difficult, slow and quite often fails. The wood crack or I fail in using the machines in the right way. Up to a quarter has to bee discarded.

I have now been selling my arts and crafts for a little more than a year and I can look back at a number of sales of very different objects. Lastly the top prices I have got has risen from 500 danish crowns to nearly 5000 danish crowns. I make a variety of objects, some practical, some decorative in different kinds of woods and enjoy immensely this period in my life. How far will I get? What will I be able to accomplish I don’t know. I have reached the age where friends and social relations are dead or disbled by strokes

etc. My handcraft may stop tomorrow. The whole undertaking though has been hugely worthwhile.

Today I work in rosewood, zebrano, mahogany, ebony, robinia, jatoba, wenge´and other woods. To a danish eye these woods are exotic, stunning even since our local woods – beech, birch, oak, ash are mostly light coloured. I have began to make shoehorn and clothes hangers in ash though.

Last spring up to summer I only sold to family and friends. In the rest of the year 2016 I participated in several arts & craft markets but only sold a handful of products. This year, however, I have produced a broader variety of products in very different price levels and the sale has taken speed and scope. Whether this will continue I is uncertain.

The wood merchants I visit import wood from all over the world. They typically import whole tree trunks sawed in planks of standard thicknesses. So I am limited to buy pieces af wood the professional buyers have declined to buy. This means, that I never know in advance whether a certain merchant has anything I can use. So I drive out in the country, visiting wood merchants and sometimes I am lucky.

Some of my wood figures are growing in size. This means, that I cannot expect to find wood planks of the necessary dimensions. So I have begun to glue planks together to reach the dimensions required. This is a completely new technique for me, and I am experimenting with different kinds of glue.

In addition to the wooden objects I have designed an advent wreath in ceramics for use at Christmas, which is produced in a local ceramics workshop.

The actual making of one object typically takes days, in some cases a week (the big whale tail in the picture). This means, that I am not able to produce in any great number.

I understand myself as a designer foremost and a craftsman thereafter. Interested in modern technology I am presently investigating the possibilities of making 3D scans of my figures and then having them produced with 3D milling in a modern carpentry company with the necessary equipment.

At present half the time used on one object is “machine time”, where I use electrical hand tools

and larger machines. The other half of the time is purely manual work using knifes, scrapers and a lot of sand paper – in total the things are grinded ten times with finer and finer sand paper, from grade 80 to grade 1200. The surface then feels as soft as silk. And thereafter I use a natural linseed oil.

It still is a great joy for me so se a figure or a practical object growing out of a rough wood block or plank. To work with wood, forms, functions, surface quality. It takes strong fingers, hands and arms and I train often at home and in a fitness center.

The practical objects are designprotected. Logo /burn stamp on the bottom prove provenance, designer and maker.

www.poulsenwoodwork.dk