The new oak bench made for Tudor Arcade in Dorchester by Simon Thomas Pirie Furniture of Dorset has been installed and is now “officially open”, as a smiling John Beaves tells a smiling passer-by at the end of this video.
Note: this video was filmed and edited by Stephen Banks (“Dorset Scouser“) with me (Jonathan Hudston) chipping in from the sidelines in a manner that I like to think was sometimes useful.
When we there, we were approached by a rather belligerent old man who pointed at the bench and said: “I hope this isn’t being paid for on the rates.” Momentarily, it was tempting to say YES, to see his reaction, but it was obvious what it would have been, and anyway, it wouldn’t have been true. It’s paid for by the private owners of the arcade.
Personally, I think it’s good to have features that add character to a place.
One of the reasons that Lyme Regis has fared well in recent years is that the resort has been able to secure some eye-catching and distinctive street furniture; the famous ammonite lamp-posts, for example.
Or E: All of those things and more? The answer, of course, is E, certainly in the eyes of its makers – the team at Simon Thomas Pirie Furniture at Briantspuddle near Bere Regis in Dorset. The oak bench they’ve steam-bent and scorched is going to be installed in Dorchester’s Tudor Arcade, outside of Waitrose and Fat Face, at the start of May. So how does Simon Pirie hope his creation will impress the eyes of its beholders and the backsides of its users?
He said: “I hope people will get a sense of fun out of it, I hope it will be visually stimulating, and I also hope it will spark conversation, because in a sense it is a conversation piece.
“It’s a practical piece of furniture with a few quirks, but it is first and foremost a conversation piece, somewhere people can meet and talk and people watch.”
In the video above Simon explains that the bench is partly inspired by traditional love seats, in which people sit side-by-side but back-to-back, so the bench is divided into a series of separate chairs.
Simon said: “The chair that you see as you walk down the arcade towards the supermarket will be face on towards you and the idea is that it will feel quite throne-like. The person who gets that seat is going to feel quite important because they are going to have the whole vista of the shopping arcade coming towards them. I’m looking forward to getting that kind of long shot down the arcade to see who’s got that prime seat.
“It might be me on occasions, I suppose.”
Simon Pirie trained in the 1990s at Hooke Park College near Beaminster in West Dorset. The college was set up by the internationally renowned furniture maker John Makepeace to encourage a generation of “entrepreneurs in wood”. Simon has been running his own fine furniture business for 12 years, until now working largely with individual clients.
The Dorchester bench is different. The result of a public art commission, it’s a significant new venture.
Simon said: ”We wanted to create something special for this. I mean, we’re known as fine furniture makers. Public art is relatively new for us, and it’s an area we’re looking to expand into.
“This is the first piece that will actually go in situ, so it’s an important job for us.
“We’re working with architects and commercial companies rather than individual clients and that’s a little bit different for us, so it’s a groundbreaker.
“It also manages to encompass lots of other areas of interest, like steambending, like high-tech manufacturing techniques, and like scorching, so there’s lots of elements in there which are very exciting for us as furniture makers.
“And I guess the slightly quirky joke from my perspective is that, if you look at it from above, it’s actually in the shape of a question mark.
“So, there is that kind of question – What should it be used for? How can it be used? Hopefully it has that sense of fun about it, because you don’t want want to be too po-faced and serious.”
Simon said that he has always had a hankering to do outside furniture, and the chance to fulfill that wish in Dorchester has been gratifying.
“It’s our county town, it’s where local and regional government is based, so it’s good to do it in Dorchester.
“It’s a gem of a little town, it’s a beautiful place, and the arcade where it’s going to be the visual centrepiece is having a refresh.
“Despite the general air of gloom about the economy there’s actually quite a lot of optimism in Dorchester, there’s new projects and new buildings, so it’s an exciting place to be.
“It’s our local county town, six or seven miles away from our workshop; it feels very nice.”
Editor’s Note: I’ve been interested in Hooke Park College and people associated with it ever since I first went there about 18 years ago. Simon Pirie is part of the group of people who’ve spread out from there across Dorset… I made the video above with Stephen Banks (“Dorset Scouser“).
MEMBERS of the West Dorset branch of the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) have broken with tradition and picked – not one – but two Pubs of the Year. One is in Bridport, the other near Sherborne.
The new Eggardon & Colmer’s View website includes a tremendous picture of Colmer’s Hill by Higher Eype photographer Andy White, one of the best images of this famous West Dorset landmark I’ve ever seen.
A NEW digital edition of The Waste Land, by the UK’s favourite poet TS Eliot, is to be shown in public for the first time in Bridport.
The Waste Land app for iPad will kick-start a debate – sponsored by Bridport-based Watershed PR – about The Future of the Word.
The event on Saturday, November 19 is a coup for the new Bridport Open Book Festival, set up by Bridport Arts Centre to tie in with the famous Bridport Prize and celebrate reading and writing.
Faber’s Head of Digital Henry Volans, who published the app with Touch Press, said: ‘Though it has been presented at industry conferences in New York, London and Frankfurt, The Waste Land for iPad has never been shown at a public event.
‘So this is an exciting opportunity. Publishers spend much of their lives discussing the digital future of books but they rarely ask readers what they want.
‘Here’s a rare chance to bridge that gap, to bring a pioneering digital book to a book festival and provoke debate around new ways of presenting literature. Sceptics welcome!’
Mr Volans will be on a panel at Bridport Arts Centre alongside Jonathan Hudston (who runs the Real West Dorset site and is a director of Watershed PR), The Bridport News’ news editor James Tourgout, Bridport writer Katherine Locke and Exeter-based poet and IT specialist Damian Furniss.
Fiona Shaw performing The Waste Land
The Waste Land app is much more than just an electronic book. It includes a specially-commissioned film of actor Fiona Shaw performing the poem, archive recordings by Alec Guinness, Ted Hughes and Eliot himself that are otherwise hard to find, a new reading by actor Viggo Mortenson, and numerous interviews with such luminaries as Nobel Prize winner Seamus Heaney, many of these filmed by the BBC.
The Waste Land app has just been shortlisted for a 2012 Interaction Award by the Interaction Design Association (IxDA) for Disrupting – Re-imagining completely an existing product or service by creating new behaviors, usages or markets. The app is up against products including the Ford SmartGauge, Nike+ GPS and the Morgan Stanley Matrix.
TS Eliot (1888-1965) is buried not far from Bridport at East Coker in Somerset. He was voted the nation’s favourite poet in a BBC poll in 2009. The Waste Land, first published in 1922, is commonly regarded as the 20th century’s greatest poem.
Tickets (£5 / £6) are available from Bridport Arts Centre (01308 424204).
