Bodger's Eulogy
June 2023
Green Ash, Saw dust, Wood Shavings
Project History
This project started as a tribute to my late grandfather Ivor, a brilliant man I never really met. He was an engineer by trade, machining parts for engines and building motorbikes. At home he was a keen woodworker, best known for his Windsor chairs. He crafted one for each member of the family in a variety of adult and kid-friendly sizes... my sisters being the smallest as she was a toddler at the time, her chair completed with an ornamental mouse on one arm. My father tells me that Ivor was a perfectionist who was never quite content with the quality of his work. This came as a surprise to me as I'd forever admired the craftsmanship in every little detail of his woodwork, right down to the mouse's tail. After the passing of my grandmother in 2020 I returned to my dad's childhood home to help him clear through old family possessions. At this point in time Ivor's woodwork shed was in rack and ruin - the roof long collapsed and the contents either rusted or soiled by mouse droppings. I remember riffling through each stiffly seized draw, brushing back the decades of dust and revealing an array of bespoke hand tools (many of which Ivor had made himself!); all the while littering my dad with questions curious to the uses and stories behind each tool. In 2023 I made it my mission to restore each of the tools I'd collected from Ivor's shed, to learn their uses and revive Ivor's craft. I felt it was important to use Ivor as my mentor, with his work and tools as my guide. I would never have wanted anyone else to teach me those skills and so this was my chance at re-creating those lost conversations in absence of a teacher. One example of how this looked in practice: When cleaning up an old block plane I realised that a final shaving remained intact, nestled in the body of the tool. I kept the shaving and used it as reference when learning to set the blade - once I had produced a shaving similar to Ivor's I knew the tool was ready to use.
Display
The outcome of this project takes numerous forms: A sculptural piece of woodwork resembling the Windsor chair, a range of restored hand tools, land art, a book documenting the contextual research and practical making of the work and a short video of animation and sound that captures Ivor's character. The Windsor chair sculpture is an unusual structure of intersecting spokes, steam-bent rails and scorp-carved seats. In keeping with Ivor's perfectionist trait I decided each element of the chair was only complete once I had a quality set of each part... surmounting in 8 legs, two seats, 22 spokes and 6 steam-bent forms. The wood has been worked green, sanded and burnished with shavings but left otherwise untreated. This allows the wood to crack, warp and bend to display both the ephemeral properties of the material and the fading presence our death leaves behind. The land art aspect of this piece was conducted at my material's source, the site where the ash tree was felled. Anytime I'd been carving away or sanding down the wood I had been collecting all of the sawdust and shavings. To complete the loop and give back to the point of origin I had an assistant bury me in shavings on the forest floor. The whole process took around 20 minutes and when I stood up my silhouette was revealed. I've returned to the site since and there's no evidence that I was ever there, my mark has faded entirely perhaps only present by wildflowers that have sprung up well-fertilised. The duality of both the hard wearing wood and fleeting sawdust silhouette were a necessary step in showing the difference between marks we make and marks we leave. I was riddled by the thought of "what came before us and what we leave behind". My aim being to connect my experiences of loss/ recovering lost memory with the same of an audience member.
