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Artist > Howard Archbold

Media > Furniture, Wood

“ Having left my life as a professional photographer in the Sydney advertising industry in 1994, I had a literal “tree change” & moved to a small community in the Upper Hunter Valley.
I had developed an interest in the history of the legendary English Windsor chair & the way they were made by the village artisan prior to the Industrial Revolution in the mid-18th century.
Having decided to try my hand in making some of these chairs I realised that the only way to achieve true authenticity would be to make them in the traditional way – that is, using hand tools only.
Over the next few years I produced chairs that looked & felt like the ‘real thing’ & started to work on commissions & to teach others this age-old craft that had all but disappeared under the onset of rampant technology.
Up until now I have hand crafted over 500 chairs, taught at the School of Wood & Furniture Design, ANU Canberra, Sturt School of Wood & run my own chair-making courses at my home in the Hunter & The Molong workshop- Central West NSW with Geoff Tonkin, a graduate of Sturt.
It has been a great journey but the best thing about it is the fact that the loudest noise in my workshop is the waterfall in the creek.”