Graceful Bends
Furniture maker eases wood into harmonious shapes

By Julie Marshall, Camera Staff Writer
October 4, 2002

His coffee tables rest on wooden arches; his console tables have curved "feet." Even his dresser drawers are subtly bent and mimic the shape of a wave.

Woodworkers often seek a specialty, such as fine joinery or wood turning. Andrew Muggleton found his niche in bending wood into arches, curves, swirls and waves. The self-taught woodworker says his inspiration has always been the soft and soothing curves of Mother Nature.

"Everything in nature is curved," says Muggleton, his voice still touched with his native England. "Look at pebbles on a beach, they are all so nice and smooth. Even eggs from a chicken are soothing. Sharp, jagged edges don't make you feel at ease, but a field of straw bending on a windy day, that's inviting.

"My philosophy is: If there is room for a curve, put one in."

Muggleton's functional modern art is truly unique, say his clients and gallery owners, based on elegant shapes, simple and clean lines, as well as dramatically contrasting wood veneers.

A tall dresser, for instance, is crafted using blocks of bird's-eye maple — a golden-colored wood veneer with "eyes" or knots throughout — bordered by nearly black-colored menge veneer. Frosted glass on one side and lining the bottom of each shelf adds a dimension of light. The artist often uses aluminum as a design element as well.

The 29-year-old's innovative designs earned him Best of Show at the Boulder Art Festival for the second consecutive season. He accepted an invitation to enter his work in last year's Sculpture Objects and Functional Art show in Chicago, a prestigious showcase for cutting-edge artwork in a variety of mediums. His benches, tables, chairs, beds and drawers can be found in homes around Boulder County and at Pismo Contemporary Art Furniture in Denver and Beaver Creek.

Sandy Sardella, owner of Pismo, describes his pieces as well-engineered and well thought out.

"I think Andrew is incredibly talented," she says. "I see a lot of stuff that is clunky and has no style or thought to it. Andrew's work has nice, clean lines and a contemporary feel to it. It has style."

Those who have bought Muggleton's work, including Alan Villavicencio, say it is unlike anything they have seen.

"It's different, beautiful," says Villavicencio, a neurosurgeon who recently moved to Boulder and needed to furnish a new house.

Villavicencio first saw Muggleton's work at the Boulder Art Festival in July. Last week, he had a coffee table and end table made of curly maple and mahogany delivered to his home.

"It's like having a piece of artwork in the middle of my living room," Villavicencio says. "But it's not delicate; you can put anything on it."

On Monday morning, Muggleton sanded a piece of mahogany resembling a giant peeling from a sharpened pencil. The swirling shape taut in a vice will soon wrap around the front of a barstool.

It's rare when Muggleton's pieces, like the barstool, stand on straight legs. There is not much joinery to be found, either — interlocking pieces and gravity hold entire works together.

Designs are whimsical and often come from spontaneous thoughts when camping, such as the way a tree bends in the forest. The winding base of a chaise lounge turned sideways takes the shape of a question mark. The base of a coffee table is the shape of a pound sterling sign, his homeland's symbol for currency.

Most important is to keep it simple, he says, as art should imitate life.

"Space should not be filled with clutter," Muggleton says. "It's the same with design and with lifestyle. That's a big challenge."

Once a design is in place, it's time to bend wood.

Rather than carving from a block of wood the width of a tree — a wasteful method, Muggleton says — the woodworker takes several thin layers, bends and glues them onto a mold and places them in a vacuum bag. The enormous pressure (4 tons) from having the air sucked out of the bag, stabilizes the shape.

Muggleton's signature mark, after shape, is the finishing touch of veneer — thinly sliced wood (1/42 of an inch) that speaks of artful texture and color. The arch of a coffee table in his workshop was finished with makore, a mahogany-colored veneer that appears as though dabbed with a paintbrush to give a waterfall effect. Lace wood, a pinkish-red veneer bears faint spots of a giraffe. The artist's favorite is bird's-eye maple because it shimmers in the light.

"It can look a thousand different ways from any angle."

Veneering, once a prestigious art form, earned a poor reputation during the 1970s and '80s as a method used on cheaply manufactured furniture. Today there is a return to the past with solid and seamless workmanship, he says.

Muggleton discovered his passion for building contraptions and carving wood as a young boy tinkering with his father's tools in the garage. When he was 10, he built a trailer to haul his windsurfer down to a lake. He took woodworking classes in his spare time while attending military school in Dover, England, which was heavily focused on math and science.

His grandfather was a woodworker, and young Muggleton wished to follow in his footsteps, but his teachers were not encouraging, he says.

"Everyone convinced me to get a 'respectable' job," he says. So he earned a manufacturing engineering degree in Nottingham and went to work in design for Ford Motor Co. He later took a position in computer design and testing for the London Stock Exchange.

And every day, Muggleton drew sketches and ached to be in a studio. One morning in 1998, he decided to get to work on living his dream. He moved to Colorado, where his mother lives, and opened a studio in an industrial area in Broomfield.

The West is a welcome change, Muggleton says.

"People are free-spirited here," he says. "They realize that designing furniture is an expression of yourself."

To see more furniture and upcoming shows, visit www.andrewmuggleton.com.

Contact Julie Marshall at (303) 473-1305 or marshallj@dailycamera.com.