Tim Stead

Tim Stead MBE (March 1952 – 21 April 2000) was a British sculptor and furniture maker who worked primarily in wood.

Early life and education

Tim Stead was born in 1952 and brought up near Helsby one of four brothers, in rural Cheshire. He was educated at Heronwater Prep School [now Coed Coch] and The Leys School, Cambridge. He attended art-school at Nottingham Trent University, School of Art and Design and undertook a post-diploma course at Glasgow School of Art. After living in Glasgow for a period, he moved to Harestanes in the Scottish Borders and then to Blainslie near Lauder which was his home until his death in April 2000. Stead's house which with typical humour he named 'The Steading’ was also home to his wife, Maggy, and their children Sam and Emma.

Work

Sculpture

Tim Stead was a sculptor before he was a furniture maker.

Sculpturally, Tim’s work did not appear to derive from any particular art historical tradition although the ideas of Brancusi, Beuys and Hundertwasser, amongst others, were central to his vision. Early on, he rejected Conceptualism, particularly in the way it was practiced at Trent Polytechnic in Nottingham, where he completed the early part of his training. An early work, 'Burnt Tower with Creaking Pendulum’ contains most of his essential vocabulary, later expanded and refined. The piece shows items of worn driftwood bound together with rope, spectacularly off centre and asymmetrical. Tim loved the natural processes which eroded and shaped the world and this piece was a personal metaphor, redolent with the infinite possibilities he would later explore.

Furniture

Tim’s work as a furniture maker could not be separated from his ideas as a sculptor the relationship between the two was always symbiotic. He joked that he was addicted to wood and that his furniture-making allowed him to support the habit .His furniture owed, something to Art Nouveau. in particular Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Majorelle and Victor Horta; his training at Glasgow School of Art was influential in this respect.

In his post-graduate year at Glasgow School of Art and in the year following, Stead's early use of abandoned and found materials developed into the use of hardwoods, some imported. Stead later committed to using only native timbers, notably burred elm and other 'imperfect' wood previously considered unfit for anything other than firewood, though now become highly desirable. He was attracted by thrift and by the heightened singularity of these timbers and the challenge of making virtues of their apparent unsuitability for furniture.

Stead had begun exploiting the waney edge of the timber before learning of the work of George Nakashima who wrote The Soul of a Tree, a book highly respected by Stead as expressing much of his own feelings and beliefs.

The Steading

His home is filled with extraordinary furniture and sculpture made of every conceivable variety of wood. Each piece is hand made- even the sinks are wooden.

Poetry

Tim had expressed himself in writing since art school days, but this had never seen the light of day, either because of modesty or the need to preserve a self-intimacy. The first volume of his poems (Towers published posthumously in ) - all written between 1998 and 1999- deal in part with the miraculous nature of Tim's chosen sculptural medium:wood.

Notable Commissions

Cafe Gandolfi

At Glasgow School of Art while studying for his post-graduate diploma, Stead met lain Mackenzie who was then working in the photography department. Mackenzie was engaged in a documentary project involving Italian cafes, which held a great fascination for him. After leasing the derelict Old Cheese­market offices in the then run-down Merchant City area. Mackenzie asked Stead to build and install all the components necessary for a complete refurbishment - chairs, tables, an eight-seater bench and a bar.

Deriving its name from the famous Gandolfi Brothers cameras, the cafe opened in 1979 and is now a Glasgow institution.

Papal Throne

Over the years Stead has undertaken a wide variety of commissions and other projects at the behest of others. Most famous of these is the Papal Chair he made for the visit of John Paul II to Scotland in 1982. The Pope celebrated mass at Murrayfield Stadium in July and Stead's chair was the centrepiece at the ceremony. It was commissioned privately by the Polish priest Ryszard Haluka. The commission required the representation on the chair of the four gospels of the New Testament -Matthew, Mark, Luke and John- by their respective symbols: the lion, the angel, the eagle and the bull.

The chair, made from elm, was inlaid in a form of marquetry with various other woods.

St. John's Chapel, The Kirk of St. Nicholas, Aberdeen

In 1989 Stead was commissioned by the North Sea Oil Industries to design and make the fittings for a new Memorial Chapel in the Kirk of St Nicholas, Aberdeen. This was a huge project project in terms of Stead's previous experience and originally involved forty chairs, a lectern, communion table and a minister's chair. Later this extended to include a screen which would divide the chapel form the rest of the kirk. The communion table, made in ash and walnut has a slightly ovoid shape representing the bow of a ship and a plough, and has inlays related to Christian symbols such as the fish and the cross. For the chairs Stead used ash and sycamore for the frames and a whole series of woods- walnut, rowan, maple, beech and yew- for a series of slats at the back of the chairs which spell out (if you know what the woods are and write down the initial letters of their names) 'We Remember Yew'.

The Millenium Clock

Towards the end of the twentieth century, Tim and a group of artists and makers: Eduard Bersudsky, Annica Sandström and Jurgen Tübbecke made a proposal to the National Museum of Scotland to make a marker and memorial for the year 2000, a great Millenium Clock.

The clock, one of the smallest of millennium schemes in terms of budget, had a much greater impact than many larger and better-funded schemes. Cased in a great wooden structure imagined and made by Tim, the clock was the result of an inspiring collaboration, created and sustained by his determination in the face of the illness that killed him, great good humour and deep generosity of spirit. Clearly very important to him, the clock was a fitting conclusion to his work.

Notable Exhibitions

Layers

The work in the touring exhibition 'Layers' represented a fundamental departure for Stead in a number of respects. This was the first exhibition composed exclusively of non-functional, sculptural pieces- and in a gallery setting.

In 'Layers', Stead's starting point was to take the most mundane of objects­ ’a lump of firewood' - and reveal the mysteries that lay within. These mysteries take not only the form of the natural patterning within the wood but also ,in combination, the shapes and structures created by the imagination of the artist. An essential element of the success of these pieces was to allow participation in the process. All the 'Layers' pieces carried an invitation - 'Please Touch'.

Scotland Creates

In 1990 Stead exhibited at the McLellan Galleries' 'Scotland Creates' exhibition which celebrated 5.000 years of art and design in Scotland. The organisers, Barbara and Murray Grigor, invited Stead to re-create one of the houses in the Neolithic Orkney village of Skara Brae, in the main service-lift shaft in the gallery.

Botanic Ash

In 1992 the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh gave Tim a 50 meter high, nearly two centuries old ash tree to 'explore'. He took this as an opportunity to reveal and display the inner life of this great tree.

Environmental Projects

Axes for Trees

In 1986 Stead conceived the 'Axes for Trees' project. This came about through his own increasing awareness concerning the types of wood he was using for his work. For some time before this Stead had been making exclusive use of native British timbers. He considered woods like ash and elm to be more attractive than, say, mahogany. In addition, these trees were fairly readily available in his immediate locale. ‘Axes for Trees' involved making an axe-head for each day of 1986 and sell ng these to raise money to buy land on which to plant trees. Like each day, each of the three-hundred and sixty-five pieces was unique and made from various species of British hardwood. Speaking about the project, Stead said:

The axe-head is something which I’ve always liked. It's a most beautiful shape and something which links form and function perfectly. There are so many other things in nature which correspond to that - it's aerodynamic, water-dynamic. It's very much about natural laws. The axe has been used by man for millions of years - it’s a very early tool, one which is used with rhythm, rather than the chain-saw which is much more destructive.

Stead look the decision to make the project as public as possible in order to attract the maximum interest and help. This included printing postcards depicting three of the axe-heads and these were distributed widely. Through this he met Alan Drever of the Scottish Community Woods Campaign and Donald McPhillimy..