9. Workspace / Desk
Let me tell you about my favourite workspace and desk.
It’s the table where I do morning posters, make images for these posts, and work through the phone breakup book. It’s where I wrote the Sourcebook and the Playbook, and where I film all my online courses.
It was once our family kitchen table. I think I got it from my parents place for the Love Is Awesome exhibition in Reading in 2008. I installed a “rubber-stamping station for making anti-Valentine’s Day cards in this show and the table’s stayed with me since.
I remember my mum being extremely excited about this table; she got it on sale from Habitat in the 1980s and it’s made of solid maple wood. Many meals were shared round it with friends, brothers, parents, visiting relatives.
Over the years it’as acquired a beautiful patina. Watermarks, stains, rubber stamp impressions. There’s a KNITSONIK stamp somewhere near the middle made incidentally that always makes me smile. I love to sit at this table for all KNITSONIK tasks.
When my brother Ferg came to take the photos for the KNITSONIK Stranded Colourwork Sourcebook, I had this bee in my bonnet about having everything on a clean white background (I think I was being haunted by the layout style of the Dorling Kindersley publishing house! Here are some pics here of me primping and fussing my colourwork swatches against a white backdrop. Everything had to be perfect!!!
For the materials section of the book, I wanted PRISTINE WHITE AND CLEAN!
Ferg was like “Felix, this just isn’t you” seeing me in that way that only loved-ones can.
He was very right and we spent some happy time scrapping my WHITE WHITE WHITE perfectionist angst and trying, instead, to more sincerely convey the rich reality of messy making, using the genuine FELIXDESK and real life clutter as an honest backdrop to making.
Since then I’ve used it as the backdrop for everything I make.
With it, I invite you to join me at this table, where we can share its gifts of life and imperfection.
Where is it that you most like to work?
Discover more from Felix Ford
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Unfortunately, my dining room table is so cluttered, I never finish clearing it off. I will blame the pandemic and living with a dog and my son. A couple of years ago I bought a new cozy armchair at Ikea, and I have a footstool from somewhere else. With the help of a lap desk, I write my emails, do my writing (poetry), and take occasional naps. Now that the weather is nice, I open the adjacent sliding glass door and enjoy the weather. My dog also loves to lie in the sun and I can keep an eye on her.
Cluttered tables are a major issue here as well – I have to work very very hard to keep mine tidied. There is a most beautiful essay by Georges Perec called “Notes Concerning the Objects that are on my work-table” in which he reassuringly writes “Sometimes I would like it to be as empty as possible. But most often, I prefer it to be cluttered, almost to excess”. I find it very relatable and like so many Georges Perec essays in this book (Species of Spaces) thoroughly affirming of the real ways in which we live, work, learn. Your cozy armchair sounds like the perfect workspace for you – one that fits your needs for rest, beauty, and intentional bits of writing. I am so happy you can have the sensory pleasures of the weather and can share the company of your dog in this lovely you-shaped workspace x