Realising that making work is one half of the job, and learning how to make time for the second half

I’ve always made objects, mainly to satisfy my own interests. Often meandering new passages, experimenting with materials and process. Generally unafraid to deviate from an idea when the possibility of an alternative makes itself known.

In some ways it’s a good way to focus one’s mind, getting to the end of a day with something new, to hold and study. To remember where these materials started their day, and recognise where they are now. Look at what worked, and what can be learned. There are successes, and failures. All things considered, as activities go for me, making is a pleasure. 

Suns on the decking outside the workshop now. Wev’e had coffee, soaking up the view of the garden, and rigged up the cutting table. The router and fence are set up, ready to machine a long series of voids, later to be filled with lengths of varying materials. Over on the lawn, Kates pushing the lawn mower, and soon there will be a spray of wood chips and grass, ejected onto the floor around us. 

We start the process, a bit of music in the background. Materials are selected, inserted into voids, glued and clamped up, ready to be machined back to a flush finish. And then repeat, watching the development in the detail and complexity of materials and colours. An involved pleasure.

Helston Wetherspoons. The coffee gave way to multiple free refills, and a great view of the highstreet and its human traffic. Here was the birthplace of our website. What pages would we have, and how would they be navigated? Discussions on how to make and market our work, who to contact, how to do that? 

Alternatively, our cave-like office at the workshop, the University super bright upstairs cafeteria in Falmouth, or our own kitchen tables. These environments are a far cry from the sunny workshop decking. These are the places where the admin needs to happen. Static, except for the coffee fueled patter of fingers on the keyboard, mouse click and phone call. A morning here, a day there, balancing this side of the job with the making aspect. Someone needs to send that document to our accountant, James, who we greatly enjoyed meeting for the first time this year. 

Now it’s one year in. We are far from being established, but improved, still having to work out the details within various administrative tasks as we go. We put aside the mornings to keep on top of all this computer based activity. And to an extent, an early morning or late eve here and there, squeezed in after younger ones have gone to bed or woken. Keeping conversation with local partners and potential clients alive is something I see Dan do very well. He lives it, lives in it, is it. I’ve sent many emails to interior designers, local businesses, letting them know who we are and what we do, trying to keep this process fresh. I call it the brain time continuum, unending with no edges. It’s essentially a framework within which the making happens, where one compliments the other, allowing us to get an overall sense of where we were at the start of day, and where we are at the end.