The Furniture Workshop provides comprehensive skills-oriented courses of study for Undergraduate, Honours and Postgraduate students aimed primarily at those wishing to work as designers/craftspersons. Students are provided with a program which comprises real and hypothetical design briefs, and are encouraged to investigate all aspects of professional practice by making contact with established professionals, workshop and studio visits, and by workshop projects focussing on issues such as exhibiting and marketing work. As part of the ANU Faculty of Arts, with professionally active academic staff, advanced technical facilities, and located close to Australia’s national collecting institutions, the School of Art Furniture Workshop provides an excellent environment for study and research.

The course offered to undergraduates is based on a series of projects of varying complexity, each designed to cover a specific area of tool usage, structure, or timber technology. A variety of hand and machine wood-working techniques, and design skills are practised. Research exercises, lectures and seminars provide an additional theoretical component to the courses.

In the Undergraduate courses a structured teaching program of demonstrations, set exercises and directed projects is offered. Aspects covered include correct tool usage and maintenance, Workshop ergonomics and safety, timber technology, jointing systems, timber structures, wood finishing techniques, design theory and practice, and a drawing program which includes technical, free-hand, and life/still life drawing components. As students advance they are encouraged to develop a more personal approach to the structural and formal potential of their medium and to examine their own practices, and look beyond the traditional boundaries of the craft of wood working to begin to establish a place as a designer/craftsperson. Honours and Postgraduate students work on research projects negotiated at the time of entry to their program.

For further information. Contact: Rodney Hayward.