originality in design
Human beings rarely have an original idea! Our brains are not
wired to think with originality. Instead, we’re wired to learn
from our environment, from our past experiences, and we usually express
new ideas by rearranging memories of things we’ve already
experienced. Early in my engineering career I learned that the
best engineers were the ones who (deliberately or not) studied the work
done of other engineers, particularly those engineers who had solved
similar problems. If you’ve ever played chess, you have learned
that the only way to improve your game is to play someone better than
you. A good chess player who plays someone less skilled is
actually being very generous. By playing and defeating a weaker
player, with each defeat, the weaker player gets a bit stronger.
As a woodworker, I was never satisfied building a project from someone
else’s design. Unlike my engineering career, woodworking was a
hobby, I had no mentor, and I had no formal training. It was just
something I’ve always loved to do. It took me a while to figure
out that just like with engineering, there are a few giants, a few
craftsmen whose extraordinary work is really worth studying. But
wanting to design my own furniture, I was limited by two things.
First was my technical skill in the craft; how to use my tools, how to
create good joinery, how to apply a good finish, etc. Most
woodworkers have a pretty good idea where they are at in this aspect of
our craft.
The second factor holding me back was a lack of realization that, even
though furniture objects are commonplace, extraordinary ones are rare,
as are the craftsmen who create them. Take chairs for
example. Most of us look at a chair and only see it for its
functional purpose; a place to sit. The vast majority of chairs
we encounter during our lifetime are not worthy of even a second
glance. They are commonplace; ordinary, everyday objects we use
daily in our life. Because we become so familiar with chairs, we
become blinded, in a sense, to the rare times when we happen upon a
truly extraordinary chair. Learning to discern one extraordinary
example of a piece of furniture is very difficult. Like hunting
for wild game, success depends upon being very deliberate in where and
how we look.
In my particular case, the realization that there were extraordinary
craftsmen whose work was worth studying was a turning point in my
personal development both as a woodworker, and also as a furniture
designer. I became familiar with the work of icons like Sam
Maloof for chairs, James Krenov for cabinetry, and Paul Schurch and
Silas Kopf for marquetry and veneer. I don’t think it possible to
stress enough that thinking along the line that for a design to be my
own, “I must draw only upon my own design insight and not “copy” the
work of others,” is really an absurd idea. Perhaps it is the word
“copy” that troubles us in the sense that since early childhood we’re
taught that copying someone else’s work is “cheating.”
I once gave a talk to my engineering organization where I said that
over my 40+ year career as an engineer, software developer, and
corporate Senior Technical Officer, I only had two or three truly
original ideas. I went on to remark that Sir Isaac Newton said,
"If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I have
stood on the shoulders of giants." Newton would have never had
the scientific insights he did if he did not studied the work of those
who came before him. To me, the parallel to excellence of
woodworking design is no different. I’m not saying I should
look at a Maloof rocking chair, copy it exactly and then call it my own
design. That might be OK if your objective is to master Maloof’s
joinery skill or to try to learn his sense flowing lines and sculptural
beauty. But if your intent is to call the design your own, then
copying in this sense is very wrong indeed.
I believe the correct approach is to try to assimilate as much of
someone else’s work as you admire and think worthy, and let this new
knowledge influence your own thinking. In this sense, because of
what you’ve now learned from someone else’s work, your own work can
never again be the same. This concept is not the same as copying
someone else’s work. If you think about, it really lies at the
core of how human beings create in the first place. Imagine you
were dropped off on a deserted island as a small child and lived alone
the rest of your life. Apart from the obvious misery of being
alone, think of how it would have stifled your ability to be
creative. How could you ever create a painting better than the
Mona Lisa if you’ve never actually seen the Mona Lisa in the first
place? How could you ever design a better chair than Sam Malloof
if you spent your entire life having never seeing a chair of any
kind? Thinking along these lines, it seems intuitively obvious
that anything we create is really the result of having experienced
things similar to the thing we seek to create, and all we’ve really
done is changed the idea slightly by incorporating some tiny new
insight or idea coming from our own mind. I think this concept
lies at the very heart of the design process and is a reality we must
accept, understand, and be willing to embrace. Until you fully
embrace this concept, you will never allow yourself the personal
freedom to create your own design. You will limit yourself in what
you do to only that which you feel has only come only from you.
Unless you’re some kind of genius, that kind of thinking will stop you
dead in your tracks.
