An Ode to the Wood Workshop
There’s nothing like this dusty, dirty, delightful sanctuary
Wood workshops come in all shapes and sizes.
The workshop I ran my business from was formerly a chair manufacturer, where they built wooden chairs and tables from timber to product. It was run down, dusty and draughty. Creaky wooden stairs. Cold stone walls. Dim lighting. Boarded-up windows. But it had charm. It was full of beautiful antique machines and hand tools, bits of wood twice as old as I was, and pieces of furniture that had stood the test of time. Everything had a story. You could feel the history in the building, and I felt something akin to pride about continuing that on.
My friend once had a workshop that, to access, required a manually controlled lift platform so sketchy (it swayed and bumped into the walls of the lift shaft) that it should have been illegal. The space itself was cramped, and working on furniture pieces required a serious amount of logistical thinking to manoeuvre stuff around.
The workshop I currently work in as a part-time helper to a friend (pictured above) is hidden in a beautiful red-brick building. It’s cleaner and newer, most of the machines are less antique, and it even has a nice toilet! — but it’s still an equally enjoyable place to spend time, for the reasons laid out below.
