Appendix
Tim Stead Notebooks
Editor’s Note
Tim Stead kept notebooks all of his working life. Each one was dated and on the inside cover Tim
wrote his name, address and phone number as well as the dates covered by the notebook in question.
These were multi-purpose day books containing poems, doodles, sketches, contacts, draft letters,
shopping lists and financial calculations. Tim Stead’s hand writing was almost illegible and there
are several instances reproduced her where certain words have been indecipherable – these are
indicated thus: [?]. Spelling and punctuation have been retained, as written. The entries are
reproduced in chronological order beginning when Tim was an art student in Nottingham and
ending in 1998, two years before his death. The aim has been to give a flavour of the diversity of
these notebooks. Where appropriate I have included an explanation of certain entries, in italics. GS
Nov Dec 1971
Tim Stead
33 Gill Street
Nottingham
NG1 4FY
Ways and ways of giving and receiving
Which can’t be overlooked
[set alongside figures placed on a chequered board]
1. The platform is a relationship which makes the two people stand out
2. It is only one part of their overall life
3. But a very important part and one which is particular, it is a mechanism, a set of expectations –
conformities
Is the base more important than the two players?
With 3 people the relationships become far more complicated the patterns more involved
each one playing to an audience of two.
I like the idea of using[?] people, looking people, involved in the game particularly if the figures
contain a sort of dream like clarity where they are uncomplicated ideals (my inadequacy to come to
terms with reality) but that they I suppose see one/ me unhappy to be in a game I’d rather not play but
unable to stop. But an alternative would be to take shapes (roughly-intuitively based on different
character shapes within people – how they alter. They would have to be touchable shapes castable
shapes to have the same shapes repeated in different categories contexts. The first of the series being a
crowd scene where there is too much to take in. Going down to 1 figure which is the best presentation
for the understanding of the figure.
1.
Do people break off into different definite categories – the weak – the strong
2.
That on first seeing a group the strong stand out often to recede later
3.
A useful guideline and discipline might be to along the ideas of ‘humours’ – Earth Air Fire Water
Or Dante
A night at Easter in Hoole [?].
So fresh so new
Emergence from a chrysalis
So unlike anything I had before felt
Or shall again and trying would be foolish
Particularly now New Year with Jack dead [?]
Experience helping only itself detracts
From seeing things as new – so new
L’exterior d’un
Papillion re-fait
Comme les ombres
En bois
The spirit of a horse
Is whipped
Out of it
consider
The lilies of the field
How they grow
They toil not
Neither do they reap
And yet I say to you
That Solomon in all his glory
Was not arrayed
As one of these
In a room
Of rheum
For life
A tomb
To bring life alive
Trying crimes not yet committed
Reassessing
Conning
Entombing
Decolonising
Rheum
Inside a wedding
At the sidedoor
Of a small country church
By a very green tree
Covered in fruit or flowers
Everywhere I turned
I was confronted
by a young girl
who sprinkled me
with holy water
To feel
As a bulb
As it begins
To emerge from winter,
Feeling the damp cold wetness
The warmth of the sun
Into Spring.
Running
Barefoot in the sun
On the field
By a river
Leaping and swinging
Talking to sheep
And smiling
Hair in the sun
And perfume
In fresh air.
The person for whom
I have been waiting
And waiting
Is about to
Come over
That hill
The Beatitudes
Blessed are the poor in spirit
For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Etc…….
February 1972
What I have drawn, have like the stages which have emerged please me, and yet in concisions of
somebody else’s judging eyes. They come too eagerly too frequently, and are often inconsistent,
they move among different things and could be rarely whims too great a quantity – The little
Princess Rose.
They lack the searching development of a Rothwick scientific approach. But it is a good way of
working, one that I like, so that suits me and one which seems natural. That they must develop – I
look back over the drawing, refresh my memory with what is there and the idea grows. It cannot
help it for one drawing contains something of its predecessor - and gains as does the same – to
fall of my ways of living.
It arises as irony day to day, hour to hour. And it takes in many needs and desires on my part to
create things which, I could give. To learn more about what I want, the way I change things each
line has significance. And, I wish to learn much as I can about forms and techniques.
But what is purpose? less changeable is that this is almost all they are about – too much about art
that it is line loosely following line to become an overall image, which can afterwards be read
into a thought, it lacks an overall plan and sentiment. The acquisition of skill and understanding
on its own seems similar to procrastinations. I am not taking on too much - and that is what I
should be doing – too much and falling short.
January 1984
Working in the real world being taken on my own terms and merit rather than on the back of an
institution.
I am here because I am running on skills learnt through art school in a sculpture department. To me
there is art in it. Some days or weeks more than others and always a future which is committed to
change and chance.
Sculpture Trust – I’d rather do the fencing
To create to invent to experiment to play to make one for many a part of being alive. For others to
observe and to read objects. Performers and audience competitors and advisers [?] law makers and lay
ex….[?] and those who abide within the law.
March 1985
Tim Stead went to Japan in March 1985 as part of a trade delegation organised by Hawick Chamber of
Commerce. The trip followed a fire at Stead’s Harestanes workshop and he was reluctant to go. He
had to ask his father for the £800 for the flight. The trip was not a success. Stead felt homesick and
alone, isolated within the group; and he made no sales and established no contacts for future orders.
On return he brought back a saw, a knife, scissors and other objects
12.20pm Monday 11 March
Only three nights more in Scotland after tonight. It takes only money to go to Japan – it is not such a
long trip – quite matter of fact in “our day and age”.
Yet I know it to be inaccessible that to stay in the air for ten hours hovering over half the world is
already beyond my belief. I can accept the distance of Japan and its cultural richness but to see my
home and family reduced to a speck in an hour and know how much smaller that speck must be after
ten hours. It is awe inspiring.
Wed 13 March
[to]? Exciting thoughts of presents to bring home – plain white Kimonos for all the family. Books,
crayons etc. to post to the children. Rings or pieces of jewellery for Maggy and scissors for Raymond.
Dee – knife – scissors – painting – ceramic pieces. Kites. Ironmongery.
Monday 18 March
Embassy for nine – early start. The tidal flow of the underground – fear of going back to school
complete with hand luggage and weary arms. No breakfast…incapable of remembering names, dates,
anything. The people there were extremely helpful, particularly Mr. S- . I feel rather vulnerable – not
wanting to make a fool of myself or show what a misfit I am. It is not a game I like or want to play –
or at least not one which I feel that I am good at…I certainly don’t feel any more alien here than I
would do anywhere else – as a business man.
I sat looking at the imperial gardens. Waited for ages for the closed Modern Art and Craft Museum.
Pulled my arms off with carrying my heavy samples. Planted two cuttings – perhaps they’ll take.
Watched girls playing a version of Grandmother’s Footsteps. Beautiful. The girls have lovely fresh
faces. Watching the moat being drained with little tractors carrying the mud away. Gazed in awe at an
old gateway – incredible thicknesses of timber – huge beams and bronze hinges.
Tuesday 26 March
I love you very much. Being away only confirms how much I love our way of life. Little things you
said before I left. Your preparation and packing I carry with me. I am weary of travelling. I see and do
things because I have nothing better to do. It enters my experience
1. Japan
2. The isolated hotel
3. Me cut adrift
When I return I will be full of the joys of Japan but that is only because they are mirrored in my return.
I have maintained my stiff upper lip throughout but many times I have thought: “I want to go home”.
Sept / Oct / Nov / Dec 1985
I would prefer to walk.
Or float on a silver wedge
I could never balance on an
Intellectual skiff
In fact
I drive a Renault – as pedestrian
As possible without actually walking.
My days are cushioned
By necessities
Reasons, excuses
Which keeps my foot from earth
Most of the time.
A lazy tension holding the dream
At arm’s length to see it clearly yet
Avoid the sparks and smoke.
An Armchair Toreador
In a Renault Four.
We had a tree den in the Beech tree
Where we drank Dandelion and Burdock
Candles spattered in the underground
Den
Cigarettes rolled in newspaper from dry leaves
In a den with a rusting boiler
These dens had none of the spark
Of building a den between your
Thighs
Your breasts the fruit hanging
Fresh and succulent and the
Sky beyond.
The first time I really saw
And longed for the sky
But only if your face came between
My eyes and the sky
When half the sky was your face
I loved it
When there was only sky I feared it.
Never to hover
And see keen as a hawk
Too late
Life presents I took my manhood
My adult hood
My education lead me out
Blind
I try to understand
And to be understood
I should have overflown
And been an overseer.
Collapse
Collision
Collusion
Communion
Random?
Meltdown?
Colon?
Collapse
And complete the circle which began
With the Greeks civilising
Once the world is? to every corner
With money, The bible, coca cola and
? radio when the? finally ?
Every corner to master or slave
There is nowhere to fly
The moon has a flag on its face
Colonised vandalised and analysed
There is no space left
Between the kite and the jet
Creativity
Love
And fear
Are now balloons of lead.
Busy
Tighten the routine
Concentrate and make the
Concentric circles increase
Their ever decreasing circles
In the Jet age business must
Achieve the same myth
Tons of economy floating on technology
Promise and hot air
The secretaries’ high heels tap out
A positive rhythm of urgency
The message is unimportant but
The speed is caused by delay in
Setting out.
Business is keeping busy
Like the aircraft which without
? drops/drags?
Business must keep moving to
Avoid commitment.
Build a
Tower
A castle
Or a bower
This table is a peaceful
Demonstration.
You may touch, spill
Or put your chewing gum underneath.
It is a piece of living art
From a living person.
The refinement of a museum is
Caused by restricting line growth.
Press Release
I am delivering a table to the Modern Art Museum in Edinburgh as part of their eating area. Big deal.
But it has not been asked for.
I am a sculptor who makes a living by making furniture. At the building stage of the museum I offered
my services to the site Architect, the Interior Designer and the Director of the museum.
I felt that I wasn’t dead enough to carry out a meaningful discussion
This table is a protest that living Art is not incorporated into Scotland’s major modern art gallery and in
general the lip service paid to creativity.
The fear of getting it wrong.
The media
Make rejected second children of us all.
They become the only rooftops
To shout it from
The stairs are crowded out with Janitors
I remember Maggy Thatcher
When she was small
Before she blotted out the Sun.
Ergonomics
Ha!
I would cry bullshit if bullshit weren’t so natural – comfortable and functional
It came as a shock that the word was still current, and that the Boiler House should make an exhibition
of it is beyond belief, and get air time - Ah well that’s the way it seems to be in “Jolly England”.
Perhaps when the radio masts are so clogged with drifts of
crisp packets.
Tree to table
Dear Sirs,
I want to write a book based on my approach to furniture and trees. It will not be as boring as it sounds.
The design is as different as the approach to? It is a philosophical and ecological work rather than a
technical or design book.
The Tree
Trees are as beautiful and as individual as human beings. I will not go further than that apart from
saying that I would prefer to walk in a forest than a crowd. And even a pine forest is pleasant although
as non-descript as a commuter train.
1
Pine
Hardwood
Pine Bow
Hardwood B..
All wood has life
All men are alive
Some trees hold the power of life
Some men are men.
The mature hardwood is becoming ?
And the best trees – most individual, most interesting are burnt, left to rot or cut as firewood or even
more ignoble purposes
The primitive African carver first had his tools blessed …? Prepared before he asked permission of the
tree.
Perhaps it is easier to enjoy, use and promote timber which is “Sub Standard”. Perhaps then we could
look at our children and our unemployed who are “sub standard”.
Broken circles
Fragments of wholes
Segments of spheres
Cycle circle
Axe Axis
Circumstance Circumference
Circle Homing
Round up
Rounding a hill
Round the corner
In ever decreasing cycles
De cypher
Cypher
Round numbers.
18 December 1985
Axe
Chippings
Sack
bales
The jar
Dirt
The knife
Parings
The open face
The hiding
The finding and forgetting
I stood for what seemed like a lifetime. Bunching with gloved hands the collar together while the
weight of the empty coat still warm inside and wet and cold outside, hung and dripped.
I took half a minute out of the wet to pause, to be transfixed for the moment. I look back to that point
which moved in slow motion realising every detail of the [?] collision. I came into the warmth, light
and familiar smells of the house my home and shell and stood watching the dripping outdoor shell.
The [?]drift and [?] ….of the coat seemed like an open scream for the peg which [?] polished the
leather to a shining point…
No doubt whose coat, even after 12 years it had to be hers, but why had she come so completely
announced. The tone of the voices beyond the door were calm, steady. No music, the crackle of
television or dishes was not to be heard. The notes of passing cars were set within the wetness of
puddle and rain. The feeling was of tragedy and I stood letting all my plans slip from my mind as space
was vacated for whatever was in store.
The coat on the hook was like the policeman’s helmet, the studded leather jacket all obliterating the
school uniform the mess of welly’s.
Between man and nature is the tool
A handle, a shaft and edge
A knife is a tool to take away life force.
Having found love, space and work to go out is as hard as being adolescent. To meet the frightened and
move their selves so hidden. Immobility is like [?] …the only way I can see it. I want to draw and find
the perfect [?] concept for [?] …really beautiful.
But it can never work because it is like a drug always wanting a bigger shot a better trip.
Einstein took the E out of Emotion and gave it to energy.
The axe – a symbol of power, progress and destruction. Progress has left the axe far behind. Money is
power, progress is technology, destruction is the pressing of a button or the pulling of a trigger. It was
the axe that made a clearing on the banks of the Thames, Hudson, Seine and Rhine.
Dear –
1986 sees the launch of two new projects – which bring me closer to an original point from which to
proceed. The first is to document the seasons [?] …felling and remaking of two Ash trees which I have
selected to be felled in the village. In this way the machining can be seen as a form of presentation or
embalming. A fuller knowledge of the source should give a richer experience of the made object.
The second project is to make one axe head each day, the money derived from the sales of these will be
used to buy land to plant with hardwoods as a public wood. The axe is a very powerful object….
26 January 1986
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder
Acceptability is in the pen of the Critic
Advertise course to begin in September
1 year course £-- for 48 week yr. Covering access to fully equipped workshop rent rates electricity. 10
hours teaching 8 hours production
work
Timber
Design
Business
With outside teaching in ? providing an opportunity??
1,000 teaching
5 £1000 profit teaching
= £20/week/student
should be £25 - £50 for two
for teaching - £20 workshop rent
Rule Britannia
Inertia rules the
waves
March 1986 - Paris
Scream, shout and explode
The ? of the wonder for her ?
Woke me
The screams subsided and
Looking down on the street
The ? ? ? of a
Couple
Talked
Moved apart together
The man walked off in one direction
Was called back – r
Then marched off in the other direction
To be called back
Only when she moved with him was
The cork put back on their passion
And they merged into the crowd
FORGIVE and FOLLOW
Nobody on land needs time
Poet that teaches woodwork
- open the gap Hold the door ajar
Toss a …. into a chink in the
Brain
Natural history – knowledge – experience
Is the only worthwhile broad link
And moon in touch with ?
Time and the stars – and this ?
? to the Sun
I had a clear idea of exactly
What to do – the answer.
I want to get a pen to write it down
I sat down and thought of the chair I
Would sit in to write it and plan it
- the thought had gone
too long to load the rifle
The thought was meant for me- it will
Come again – next time I hope to be ready for it
This time I’ve blown it.
I think I know where it hides
I know now what I’m looking for.
A TRIAL YEAR IN FURNITURE
Making and timber without being
On your own or taking the full capital
Plunge. Own workspace – tuition
Guidance – outside advisers.
Details: Tim Stead, Blainslie, Galashiels.
With draw.
That sinking feeling,
as the sap descends.
Leaf after leaf becomes
Detached
Fall.
Axe ions
Axions speak louder than
I cannot
Handle
I too have wished not to, try not to.
If a Jumble of pennies are shaken often enough
They will form a pile
Unmoved they remain a pile
Whose order is random
DO you sit in the garden – or lean over
The wall, are you in the kitchen, the office
Or nursery
In brief I am too confused
[leaves of notebooks interspersed with loose flakes of rolling tobacco]
Bill Findlay
One OAK Dining Table!
900
6 OAK Corset’s
900
+ VAT
if they get the house ! ?
if not we will have to see
-
one or all need slightly lower – 1” 2
at least 2-3 months
We still live in trees
[drawing here of perspectival gradation of objects]
we have £30,000 to do it with
go for it – 10,000 should be
Office – at 10,00 it will be
We have the timber, time and energy
-
but nowhere to store the crop.
[drawing of axe-head]
Beret
The
hat
Shit
I believe it is a time for presents
Time to beret the hat shit and all the peasants [?]
No more peasantry
12 August 1986
Stone sails
Born in the air
Crossing water
I want to show and to share the excitement of exploring wood. It has taken many years of experience
to find – what now seems a single – way inside the wood.
The chaotic hulk remains and inside is the revelation of lines of growth. It “means” nothing – nature
“means nothing” – our lives are meaningless. But there is a joy in expressing a moment where we see
more clearly.
Nature is endless – and man is natural even in his destruction. But to experience creativity and a joy in
…..? – can eliminate the destruction - ? –
My aim is to be natural – and positive – to pass my life with excitement which is not destructive.
Please touch and handle and play with the wood with confidence and respect. Do not worry about
replacing it in the right order – enjoy it. Please try to refrain from defining – the only definition is that
it is wood that has been messed about with. Try to avoid –especially out loud – “it looks like a…”
What I want to give you is a pleasant surprise….when you open [?] there is expectation generally
dashed by reality – here there is no reality – if you must break the spell – rebuild ? it – and use another
basis – earth, air, fire and water and we define it in these terms.
Piece of String
For total security attach one end to
The origin
Knowing that you can return
May help you to proceed
This piece of string guarantees your
Way back but not forward
Only one end is secure.
layers
an exploration in wood
Oh
Sweet
Spontaneous
Earth
How do we know that we exist
If we do not make a work,
Return to it and see that it is
Still there.
Come into my parle hour
Come to enjoy your
Visit to my whirled
It is not important because we
Will all be dead in a few doe rays
But in that time we only happen
Once
There’s a bird on a tree
Who is happier than me
One shot
And a pot
Its happiness over
My life suspended,
No richer
I can only eat its death
Not its life.
[The following were written on end papers]
less far
carry yon
scale
Ben Thymind
shor
Sprey doubt
landswell
Land scaped
sirgular
Mother Dearth
Rowend
Hooray Zone
Xcell piyell
Tied al
Scell
Helm
Whales Wails ong
Thore
Ple arise Trip Ditch
Thyime
Khike on
Trist
Slee pwal pwork.
Bi long
Bi wear
Fors sill
Long
Disc/ over
Cat shout
Dour Mhyr
Out care in
Jour Knee
Sea aye
Sayle
Kyat a pillow
Saye
Ban i shed goodds
Van i shed go odds
Show eye.
D’ark
Fors syll
Brake as under
Whist le blow
Star hike
Hugh Moor sense
Tauw werr
SpiRE All
WEAAKE WAYK
August 1986
The shit eaters of the west
The middle stomach’s attitudes
Beatitudes
The credo of the credit card
[This amongst numerous orders for furniture etc. where costing (and financial calculation) is a prime
consideration]
OV Poetry
The moment is the linn seed
And the linn seed the moment
No seed no moment
No moment no seed
NOSE HEAD
Always surrounded By the Albumin
Which takes care of today
And [?] a few days more
But what of the Moment too
Protected in its layers of survival
But on occasion the moment in the
Nucleus will beat out such a Rhythm
That the moment surges
Through minute hour day month
[?] decades of tomorrow
and [?] to the power of ten
and touches the outer shell
and hears the echo (sic) of a world
outside which has many yesterdays
and some tomorrows longer than the
egg as the egg is smaller than the
Universe but the universe
Is only a moment.
It is not the touch of
The shell or the trouble to
Save but the shock of the distant
Echoe which is of poetry
The shock of [?] is nothing to
The Rhythm of the spheres.
One man one tree
Many lives
Book of Contrasts
Litter in Streets
Leaves in water
Litter in water
Boat in Water
Litter in Streets
Nest twigs leaves
Road Strata
Rock Strata
Gun
Building
Uniform
hand handle
hand handle
December 1989 – January 1990
Layers is an infinite seam for developing. Perhaps I have spent too little time on each area – an
ancestor period, more voyages – more gods more mountains – more eggs, more baleens, more
crustacean. Never can I unearth all the mysteries. I see endless journeys into wood. I have a
wonderful stock of burrs which I can’t wait to get into. Now I know they are wanted I don’t mind
storing them and building up a big collection. Now is also the time to research not art galleries but
natural histories.
The parcel contained all that was possible to fit in. The love, the care, the protection, good luck, tears
and a thousand half said sillinesses were sown into packing. Each stitch a half formed, half hidden
thought.
July - August 1991
40 Stones
40 Seeds
40 Thoughts
40 Deeds
January 1996
Art and Craft
I began in art and I am largely in craft as an artist rather than a craftsman in art. There is no single
definition of either – or of what an individual is or wants. I had masses of energy and a lust to work in
wood. Sculpture could not sustain that output and I couldn’t wait the 20 years to be able to live from
sculpture.
The opportunity to teach never arose but I couldn’t teach when I was still learning and exploring and
still am. I feel myself a victim of today’s art world. The narrowness and distance of London. I missed
my place at RCA and went to Glasgow – a very particular turning point that could have made my life
very different. Ultimately we are potential (?) and that potential grows or distorts if it is given the
opportunity. I had to make my own opportunities – came down the scale and made coffee tables, beds
tables and chairs. This was less compromised than it sounds and was a freedom. A joy to make, use
form. Be original and know for whom I was working.
July 1997
Maggy
Who waters the plants?
Who tends the space?
Who orders and arranges?
Welcomes and invites?
I am a wall
That breaks the wind
To allow a flower to bloom
And the seeds of the flower
To germinate
You should leave me now
I am a wall and a weight
Certainly not wind proof anymore
They roam and invade
Every nook and cranny
So swift a change from
Contemporary to archaeology.
June 1998
40 stones
40 seeds
40 hopes
40 deeds
Too late I send this book to CM (?) who I would have loved to have met and worked with. It is rare to
meet a fellow spirit.
May 1998
Suicide is unnatural
Waney edges seem inappropriate
More sharp more poignant
A nice Tim Stead bench with
arms and a back. No problem. It can
easily be done but it should be different.
June 1998
Dear Eoin,
Ref the letter to Alex (?) you have done brilliantly – but it is too big a job from a standing start.
I suggest a list of job functions which are part of the total concept. Some are being handled while others
will need to a waiting for a volunteer notice on it.
Green woodworking
Willow work
Charcoal making
Carving
Educational courses
Basket making
Wood turning
Tourism
Networking – open days
International exchanges
School links
Exhibitions
Trade Fairs
Concept spreading
Art School links
Industrial links
Selling wood
Advising on wood use
Technical advice
Direct selling
Many of these are covered by people drawn to the nucleus that the Wood School’s energy has created –
more will come.
You have cast your bread on the water and many things will take time. The right person comes along to
fill that gap.
So much has been achieved – a big bang and some elements must be left to develop at their own pace.
Set simply achievable milestones – best in retrospect. Create the illusion of a simple step by step
progress which can easily be attained. Let the real interactive chemistry develop in its own way.
If there is nobody available to deal with such and such well that’s it. Come back in six months or if
you can’t wait for it to happen organise a course and make it happen.
November 1998
Spain
There is a greyness
In half sleep
Half life
Bleak moments when distraction stops
Into the grey there is a glow
A source of heat
A direction
But then comes distraction.
Every second is on every page
There for me to write
If I don’t it will be written across by autotype
Nature doesn’t like vacuums
Fill the space yourself or let it be filled by whatever comes along.
Am I only waiting?