Woodturning Beauty

Woodturning Design
By Donald C. Brown

Many years ago, I took lessons in oil painting for a few months. In some ways, it was a frustrating experience. The Instructor asked me what kind of painting I wanted to do. Since all I knew about art was that I could recognize beauty in some paintings and not in others, I didn’t know how to answer her. From her viewpoint, she expected the students to already have a basic knowledge of art and she would teach the mixing and brush stroke techniques necessary to create the style you liked. From my viewpoint, I wanted to know how to put beauty on a canvas. I did not know the difference between realism and idealism, cubist and impressionist, or anything else. I perceived beauty in nature and I wanted to express that to other people. I produced a couple of very nice paintings, but I stopped taking lessons after a few months because I was frustrated with the communication problems I had encountered.

I have seen the same thing happening in woodworking and especially woodturning. The difference between then and now is just that I have experimented with life enough to discern the differences between the different ways of communicating beauty to your audience. To me and to some of the people I see in woodturning, there is a mystic beauty in the wood. I didn’t put it there and I can’t make something that is not already there. All I can do is release what I have sensed in the wood. Most of the instructors of woodworking or woodturning that I have encountered know what I am talking, but very few of them are able to teach me how to perceive and release that beauty. The problem is that the perception of beauty is an individual mystic event that cannot be taught or explained; it can only be experienced.

Having stated the impossibility of describing the experience of creating beauty in wood, I am now going to write a description of the experience of creating beauty in wood.

I first select the kind of wood I want to work with. To make this selection, I consider the color, density, grain structure, shape, and size of the wood that has attracted my attention today. I look for a light colored wood with a strong and definite contrast between the sapwood and the heartwood of the piece. I prefer a dense and hard wood because the feeling of the tool cutting the wood is more pleasing if the wood offers enough resistance to provide sensual feedback. The grain should be strong and linear, with some occasional curves or wrinkles to hold your attention. The size and shape of the wood help me to determine what kind of object I can make and what kind of form that object will display. To make it more difficult, these concepts cannot be taught easily. To learn these concepts, I had to spend several months, almost years, of handling and working with wood to learn to appreciate it for what it is; a living thing that has value and beauty simply because it exists. In other words, the best way to experience the toughness and strength in a piece of red oak wood is to spend half a day cutting it down with a double-bit axe, another half a day trimming the limbs and cutting it to fence-post length, and at least two weeks digging and cutting roots to get the stump out of your intended yard. I promise you that you will then appreciate how strong an oaken roof beam can be and how beautiful oak kitchen cabinets are.