Eric Phillips

My practice is one of designing and making wooden watercraft and fine furniture. I am interested in vernacular forms that inspire a multiplicity of relationships with their users and environments. Currently, I am making chairs, tables, strip canoes and surfboards. Here I am presenting the ‘Antwerp Chair’, the ‘Japanese Fisherman’s Chair’ and the ‘L’Ours’, a cedar strip canoe model.

Using when possible local naturally felled woods from local suppliers in Co. Kilkenny, I work with fine, relatively small sections. I am interested in the circulation of space and form and how the tapered geometry of verticals, horizontals and diagonal planes interact rhythmically with the negative spaces that they create. Drawing first on CAD software, I use traditional techniques of joinery and assembly that leave apparent the constructivist nature of the junctions. Bevelled edges echo the diagonal traverses on the legs, continuing the circulation between planes, junctions and space. In choosing to build the same model in different woods, I am proposing a collection of chairs that offer the user creative aesthetic possibilities through their use and spatial arrangements. This approach also brings to the fore their materiality, the diversity of the natural environment and the building process.

In the hand-crafted canoe that I am presenting here, I have modified certain aspects of the traditional design of Native American communities, such as the curvature of the hull and the width, to render it adaptable to our local river, lake and sea waters. Its long sculptural curves interact with the fine detail of the caned seats, hand-carved yoke and copper rope slips. Made from Western Cedar and Irish ash, it offers a sculptural object that embodies movement, with a purpose and function behind the decisions and execution of every curve and contour.

In choosing to work with these forms simultaneously, I am exploring the movement inherent in the relationships we have with the vernacular both on and off the water. Embracing both tradition and contemporary computer-assisted design, I aim to create pieces of levity, fluidity and sculptural beauty.