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Richard Jones Furniture
Biography I began my career as a trainee furniture maker in my native Great Britain in
1973 and I've worked continuously in the profession ever since. I studied and
qualified as a furniture designer and maker at Shrewsbury Technical College in 1983.
During
my time in the industry I have been a furniture practitioner in a
wide variety of roles and at many levels. My employment
early in my career
included periods as a bench joiner, cabinetmaker and furniture
maker for a variety of mainly small businesses. Those early positions
were followed by workshop supervisory and management roles along with
increasing responsibility for designing, initiating, and managing the
manufacture of furniture and wooden artefacts for my employers;
during this period I was, for example, employed as a furniture
technician in what was then the Furniture Department at Edinburgh
College of Art, and as the workshop manager at the Children's Museum of
Houston. During the middle of the 1980s I started taking on private
furniture design and making commissions in addition to my full-time
employment. I opened the full-time business Richard Jones Furniture
approximately eighteen months after I moved to Houston, Texas
in 1993.
In 2003 I returned to Great
Britain to take up an offer to teach furniture design and
making at Rycotewood College, Oxford. In 2005 I moved to Leeds College of Art
and Design to become Course Leader of the Foundation Degree/BA (Hons) in
Furniture Making.
Exhibitions of workMy
work has appeared in galleries, exhibitions, expositions and shows
since the early 1980s. Selected highlights include participating in the
Philadelphia Furniture and Furnishings Show, 1999; The Houston Home and
Interiors Show, 2000; invitational mixed media show at the
Brazosport Art League,
Lake Jackson, Texas, 1998; invited participant in Furniture expositions between 1999 and 2002 at Gremillion &
Co gallery, Houston, and taking part in the collaborative multi media events 'Fire' at the KGA Compound, Houston, during 2001 and 2002 hosted by well known interior designer Kelly Gale Amen.
WritingI enjoy writing and my articles and contributions
on furniture
making and woodworking topics are published in the USA and the UK. Magazines that have published my work include
Fine Woodworking, Woodwork, Woodshop News, and Woodworker's Journal in the USA;
and in the UK, Furniture & Cabinetmaking and The Woodworker.
Related to the articles I create when the mood and
inspiration take hold of me is an ongoing major writing exercise; this
is an illustrated academic manuscript on timber technology, and written with
the needs of both professional and amateur furniture practitioners and
other woodworkers very much to the fore. Completion of this text is
expected in 2009, after which I hope a publisher that has shown great
interest in my project decides to publish it in book form.
© 2009 Richard Jones
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