Since European settlement, Tasmania has been home to generations of people who have worked with its timbers. In the hands of professional craftspeople, and many an enthusiast, the island’s timbers lend themselves to furniture which easily fulfils the design trinity of function, form and beauty.
Try comparing these qualities with plastic. Scratch or crack a plastic object and it becomes tragic and worthless. Inflict the same damage on timber, and it can be glued, sanded and refinished, emerging just as elegant, giving every appearance of perfection and performing as strongly as before.
Nowhere is the value of wood more obvious than in Tasmania, with its unique island timbers. Confounded by isolation and with limited transport, early settlers used what was local, and the history of shipbuilding with Huon pine and the making of furniture from highly figured timbers is well-documented.
Those settler-cut timbers still hold up many of our buildings, and appear as fine furniture in drawing rooms across Australia. In Tasmania, they reappear, phoenix-like, in homes and businesses, having been hoarded for years by people seduced by their beauty.
Such a story is found at Herne Lodge in the Highlands. Owners of property St Patricks Plains, Paul and Shauna Ellis, built their hunting lodge there in 2011 to a design by their son, architect Charlie Ellis. The property had been in the Ellis family for more than a century, used as summer grazing for the merino lambs from their farm at Bothwell, 39 kilometres to the south.
Years before they had plans for the lodge, the Ellises had stashed away a precious store of boards from their sheep yards, built in 1958 from Tasmanian oak milled at Bothwell, thinking to reuse them someday.
When plans for the hunting lodge came together, it made sense to source material from the farm, and find a way of uniting the two properties. The reconditioned oak boards were used for benchtops in the kitchen, study and living areas, the project undertaken by cabinet maker James Curtis, based at Westbury.
“It’s an invaluable and meaningful connection to our Bothwell farm to have the boards incorporated into the lodge,” said Shauna Ellis. “The timber has such character and patina, and sets off the new and modern finishes.”
Boltholes from the old fences are clearly visible in the black filler used to level the surface, emphasising the history of the material.
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Curtis had previously worked on a restoration of a church hall in Perth, bought by café owner Colette Barnes and reopened as the popular eatery Ut Si.
A knowledge of traditional carpentry techniques was crucial as Curtis revealed original features of the build structure and remodelled them, so that diners could appreciate them as worshippers once did.
The building was a “horrible little church hall” when he and Barnes first walked into it, but it had great bones. Built in 1840, the structure had unusual “scissor trusses” in the roof. Instead of straight cross-beams passing from one side to the other to support the rafters, there was a series of crossed trusses at a slightly lower pitch to the roofline. These had been lime-washed and then concealed by a plasterboard ceiling. Once revealed, it was obvious that this was one of the building’s most striking features. Curtis cleaned, restored and repainted the trusses, and they were left exposed. Whilst the grain of the timber cannot be seen, he says, “the structure is the thing, and it’s an amazing sight”.
What was above the worshippers’ heads was matched by what was beneath their feet. The Tasmanian oak floor boards had been back-sawn by 19th century carpenters. In this traditional technique, an entire length of trunk would have stood on end in a pit and been sawn through from top to bottom by two woodworkers using a handsaw. Nowadays machines are used and sophisticated techniques, guided by digital calculation, optimise the cutting of timber for minimal wastage.
Modern machining saws into the heart of the trunk, directly across the grain to the centre. This results in stronger planks, but less grain patterning. The old back-sawn method results in what’s known as a cathedral pattern grain, says Curtis, and a remarkably beautiful floor. Testament to his regard for it lies perhaps in the fact that he has returned repeatedly to repair it, plugging holes in planks where dry rot has made some inroads.
“High heels just go straight through them,” he says wryly.
Like many contemporary Tasmanian makers, James Curtis trained at the Australian School of Fine Furniture, now part of the School of Architecture and Design at the University of Tasmania. There he and his peers have been able to study with the finest of craftspeople.
Rex Heathcote, one of the school’s founders in 2002, still makes exquisite bespoke furniture at his workshop in Longford. His folding tables and stools in figured myrtle, made under license to a design by British maker Trevor Cottell of the London School of Furniture, are an elegant addition to many a Tasmanian living room.
At the School of Fine Furniture, Heathcote brought in renowned maker David Upfill-Brown to teach students for the first year of the two-year course. Upfill-Brown is best known as maker of the Speaker’s Chair in the House of Representatives in Canberra. The simple but imposing chair and backboard were crafted from Australian grey box timber, Tasmanian black-hearted sassafras and six types of wattle.
Upfill-Brown prohibited use of machine tools in his classes, believing students should develop their appreciation of hand methods. As Curtis explains, however, modern machinery and contemporary methods of reconditioning timbers are essential for repurposing and reusing wood. Old timber becomes “case hardened” as it ages in situ, repeatedly absorbing moisture and then drying out again. To be reused, it must first be reconditioned – steamed and redried to release the tension held in the grain, and rebalance the timber.
The additional reality is that while many believe reclaimed timber to be a cheaper form of building material, this is not the case. Expect to pay a premium if you commission a reclaimed timber piece, says Curtis. This is partly because the build-up of dirt, stones and grime on the surface are hard on the cabinet maker’s machinery. “We spend a lot on blades,” he said.
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This is something Laura Danderian, owner of Launceston’s Earthy Eats, can vouch for. When she opened her sustainable food business – a café and small grocery with a focus on connecting diners to Tasmanian produce – in 2015, there was never any doubt furnishings would be in line with her belief in using Tasmanian materials, and reusing where possible.
The café is festooned with handsome timbers, each with a story. A monolithic communal table is made from sleepers from a family property at Lower Beulah, and it took days to remove gravel from the surface with a wire brush, she says. A rough bench made from the timbers in their original, weathered state sits in the outdoor courtyard, a startling contrast to the handsome table within.
Complementing it is the set of three blackheart sassafras tables, with the timber’s signature liquorice coloured lines weaving across the surface. The three can be drawn together to form a magnificent long whole, their wavy, organic edges jig-sawing neatly.
The piece with the most provenance is perhaps the front counter, made of fiddleback Tasmanian oak. Often described as looking like gathered silk, the grain patterns are thought to be caused by compression forces on the trees, such as heavy wind. This particular timber came from rainforest at The Sideling track just south of Scottsdale, one of Tasmania’s most elevated roads. It is thought to have been taken from the forest there in the 1930s by builder Thomas Orr, a notable Tasmanian with connections to the National Trust, and held in storage by descendants. Likewise, the café’s window bench, a plank of King Billy Pine as thick as a doorstep and five metres in length, was found at an estate clearance a decade ago by friend Brian Singline, a woodworker and collector from Scottsdale. It has sat, suspended in time and awaiting the right home, ever since.
To Laura Danderian, seating diners at tables which speak so poetically of Tasmania’s riches adds exponentially to the quality of their experience.
Woodworking techniques have modernised, and cabinet maker James Curtis doubts he would last a day using traditional methods. But the language and knowhow remain, and the use of double dovetails and splicing evoke age-old traditions.
The lustre of the woods and the pleasure they bring are manifestly the same. These timbers will outlast and outshine us all.
This article was first published in issue 89 of Forty South magazine.
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Fiona Stocker is a Tamar Valley-based writer, editor and keeper of pigs. She has published the books A Place in the Stockyard (2016) and Apple Island Wife (2018). More of her writing can be seen at fionastocker.com.