PURE POETRY IN WOOD

 

By Sarah Venable

Article courtesy of Signature Barbados magazine

 

Driving on the windy St. Thomas ridge where Vaucluse Sugar Factory once extracted sweetness from the grassy canes, you might glimpse a modest sign whose graceful script reads: "Island Furniture." If it registers at all as you pass by, you might envision wicker, or perhaps the stolid dining ensembles to which masses of hire-purchasers aspire. But people in the know are aware that behind the prosaic name is a special place that produces pure poetry in wood.

  Those in the know are a select few: owners of Barbados' most magnificent homes, their designers, architects and decorators, the more savant grand hoteliers, and connoisseurs from such rarefied retreats as Mustique. When style and quality are the primary concerns, not cost, the elite seek the talents of Island Furniture Ltd.

  Island Furniture Ltd. makes furniture and architectural details, all custom-designed and laboriously hand-crafted. They also do millwork for contractors and they refurbish furniture. Their company makes products ranging from enormous arched doorways of fragrant Burmese teak to "white mahogany" furniture as flawless and fanciful as Faberge eggs. These are museum-quality pieces, objects for which odes could be written:

  "For beauty being the best of all we know/ Seems the unsearchable and secret aim of nature." (Robert Bridges)

  These objects d'art take form just a short drive from the West Coast salons they will adorn, in a place that takes you back in time. You approach Vaucluse Factory along a dirt driveway and enter a complex of 18th Century buildings. The restored, butter-coloured Vaucluse Plantation house looks sound and inviting, with bougainvillea brightening its entrance. A row of thriving young neem trees softens the view of the old sugar factory and outbuildings across the wide, marly yard. The coral stone buildings vary in size and state of repair. From the outside, they are simply relics of a bygone era. But inside, a new chapter is quietly being added to the history of Barbadian craftsmanship.

  The main workshop is housed in a vast old building that originally housed a stone crusher. It has walls of bumpy old stones, whose cousins were probably crushed on this very site. A galvanised roof hovers high above, and a cool breeze travels briskly through the broad, wide open doors. Sturdy old English woodworking machines keep up a steady, almost muscular humming. That sound couples with the distinctive scents of resins and dominates the senses in an almost dizzying synaesthesia.

  Here, a dozen men are focused on the woods before them, so intent that for a moment the humming seems to be the sound of so much concentration. Patterns for curves and curlicues hang from the west wall. You stroll past a large, unfinished armoire and inhale the scent of its cedar lining. Further along are louvered, arched teak doors that will go into a palatial West Coast house. They are mammoth, and the joinery is flawless. This is not mass production. Think more along the lines of a medieval guild, producing a prince's patrimony.

  Barbadian antiques are now regarded as something of a national treasure, and cannot legally be exported. Nor can large mahogany trees be cut. In an ironic double twist of fate, furniture of equally high value is now being produced again on our deforested island, crafted by contemporary Barbadians from imported timber, primarily for foreigners who reside here part time.

  Island Furniture Ltd. is not alone in making fine furniture, and heightened demand has prompted a surge in local production, but it is indeed doubtful that Island Furniture has any rivals at its level.

  Island Furniture’s pieces are in a sense "instant antiques", although the fabrication process is anything but instant. Elsewhere in the world, prices for such works would be astronomical. Here they are just very (and deservedly) expensive. Timber is shipped in via brokers from Guyana and Southeast Asia, some of it costing as much as $50.00 a board foot. Employees are paid top dollar for their skills and loyalty. In a highly competitive marketplace, some have been with the company since its inception back in 1982. Every product is unique and custom made, and nothing less than perfection is acceptable. Island Furniture employs over two dozen skilled workers, but it can still take months to create a single piece.

  After the designs are constructed, the pieces go to a special room where the finishing begins. First the surfaces are sanded, filled, and sanded again. Then the pieces are moved to another studio where fancy finishes are applied. These consist of glazed layers and accents of colour that may be applied by spraying, wiping, pouncing, painting with a pencil-point-fine brush, or even with a feather. This takes longer than the assembly and smoothing processes put together.

  The results? Take, for example, a certain oriental-looking stereo cabinet. Chinoiserie meets genetic modification in the Island Furniture treatment of bamboo. The legs and edges of this unit are shaped like that distinctive stalk, but its shimmering surface appears to be made of polished tortoise shell. A brass mesh and basket-woven grill front, antique pendant doorpulls, and glossy faux inlay top with a hand-painted bird and bamboo motif complete the fantasy. This is just one of the creations underway.

  Across the yard, in the old sugar factory, more stunning effects are in progress. Getting there is half the fun, as the site adds to the mystique. The building is the size of an aeroplane hangar and has the eerie feel of an abandoned film set or a bombsite. You stand in the shadowed cavity for a moment to get your bearings. Ribbons of sunlight descend through fissures in the roof 30 feet above -- where there's any roof left, that is. The middle portion is wide open to the sky, making the central space a most unlikely atrium of industrial detritus. Great rusting hulks of machinery are silent, almost reproachful presences.  Passing through the crypt of dead gears and back into the shadows, you reach two surgically clean, clinically-lit rooms overlooking an old water catchment area. Here, young people apply further layers of paint and tracery to otherwise complete pieces. One, an A-level art graduate of Queen’s College, is meticulously colouring in a romantic design of a flowering vine on the curved margin of a cabinet. A young man comes in carrying tracing paper patterns. These designs will adorn lamps. Of course Island Furniture does accessories;  every detail is thought of.

  The plantation house is where the furnishing journey culminates. Inside Vaucluse House, exposed stone walls and pickled wood define Arcadian spaces that are airy and natural, yet pervaded with sensuality. It emanates from the contours of cabriolet legs and bombee fronts, from the richness of textures in fabric and crackle-finished wood, from the colour of crotons in a vase and painted hummingbirds floating on a lustrous ecru surface. All of it works in harmony to induce feelings of pleasure, romance, and assurance of worth.

  In the factory you begin to grasp the perfectionism behind the production of each piece. But to fully appreciate the artistry, you must encounter a finished work in the context of a gracious home. Hewn from the rough honesty of natural timber, each piece is complex and deeply-layered, so finely crafted that the "secret aims of nature" are achieved, embodying in wood the brilliance of pure poetry.

 

Article courtesy of Sassie Stears, Sassman Caribbean Publishing,  Barbados  246-430-9075    

Written by Sarah Venable   saravie@caribnet.net