Keith Mosse is off to Australia again, leaving his furniture-making business in the formidable hands of two French craftsmen, writes Gemma Tipton
LIKE PLANTING OAK TREES that you will never see in all their glory, or laying down wines for your children to enjoy (when they are old enough to drink), there's something selfless about buying an heirloom. Except it's not quite like the oak sapling or slowly maturing wine, for an heirloom is also something to be enjoyed in the present - it's a gift to the future that you can use in the now. This makes it all the more surprising that we eschew such long-term loveliness in favour of the fickle fashions of interiors fads. A coffee table in red-lacquered chipboard in the shape of a peanut? A poorly-sprung sofa in "this season's animal print"? Or a hardwood dining table whose grain and sheen will intensify and gain greater depth with use over decades?
If I'm starting to feel a little poetic about wood, it's something I must have caught on my recent trip to the workshop of Keith Mosse and Philippe Hétier in Bennetsbridge. I was, I must admit, an easy disciple.
I've always had an attraction to such things - there's an oak table in the kitchen of my parents' house that is older than all of us put together, and I have a rosewood sewing box that came from my grandmother that manages to be hard in feel with a luscious softness to the way it looks. This kind of beauty, the kind that lasts for several lifetimes, comes from the hands and inspiration of master craftsmen, and Mosse and Hétier really do have a feeling for trees. Lifting a plank of timber in the workshop, they demonstrate how you can tell from the grain which way the wind was blowing during the life of the tree, where the branches grew and what the climate conditions were like. While you can count the age of a tree through the rings of its trunk, looking at the lines, knots, whorls and patterns in its grain can describe the kind of life it lived. Knowing this makes the sight of a table in the workshop even more special - not just something to sit and eat at, it now connects you to a life of the land it came from.
Mosse himself comes from an old Kilkenny family - they had been millers in Bennetsbridge for five generations. Now one brother, Paul, is a well-regarded contemporary artist, and another, Nicholas, is famous for his ceramics (made in a workshop across the road). Keith had initially turned to farming, but the farm failed in the 1980s - "As many things did," he says - and so, with a family to support, he taught himself woodturning. "I always seem to have been out of step with the times," he says. "I took up woodturning when there was no money, but left for Australia just when things were about to come good in Ireland."
Attracted by a sense of adventure, and the good weather, Mosse spent 12 years in Australia, before returning to Ireland to be closer to his family. But when he came back, he didn't travel light - he was accompanied by two massive containers full of Australian timber and burl. These arrived one bitterly cold day, when snow was falling, and Mosse had them winched into the yard of the family home. They're still in the same spots today, with the workshop built around them. One is now the office and the other the spraying room. On a shelf in the workshop, some of the original burl remains too - these are the knotty growths that appear on the trunks of trees. You see them sometimes in Ireland, though they are more common in the Australian climate. Burl lends itself to wonderful bowls and, in the hands of Mosse, even lampshades.
Meanwhile, Hétier is from the French Alps. He came to Kilkenny and Mosse's workshop during the "journeyman" part of his training with French guild Les Compagnons du Devoir. He has an obvious, and quite Gallic, passion for what he does, and the guild, whose origins date back through nine centuries, was the perfect place to perfect his skills.
The guild has partners across Europe, and is dedicated not just to promoting excellence in craftsmanship, but to handing on skills and knowledge to future generations. After making his "masterpiece", a set of doors which are now in Brussels (made for free), Hétier had to swear an oath to continue teaching his craft for the rest of his life.
This ethos is very different from the one Mosse encountered both in Ireland and Australia, where the pervading wisdom is "I got my knowledge the hard way, and that's what you're going to have to do too." In fact knowledge and skills are handed on in Ireland, but generally only between family members and within organisations and firms.
Hétier makes the point that this is why the Irish, who undoubtedly have extraordinary creativity and visual flair, don't necessarily show the depth of knowledge that marks out the work of their Continental counterparts.
This is one of the reasons why he imports most of the timber he uses, Irish timber being just not well enough seasoned and treated (Hétier set up another company called The Art of Wood to do this). We get into a discussion about the best wood to use: willow, oak, cherry. "What about pear?" suggests Mosse, as the two continue to muse over the almost magical properties of their medium.
There is a wonderful sense of partnership between the two, as each acknowledges the strengths of the other. "He's a better woodturner than I'll ever be," Hétier says about Mosse. "His skill as a cabinet-maker is far greater than mine," Mosse says about Hétier, but the partnership is being broken up, as Mosse is returning to Australia, passing the business to his long-time colleague.
"I have children there," explains Mosse, "and I'm no longer able to do the heavy lifting."
Will this mean a change in Bennetsbridge?
"No," says Hétier. "The sign on the gates will still say Keith Mosse Craftsman in Wood, I don't see any need to alter that."
Hétier now has another member of Les Compagnons, Franck Beaudoin, working with him and they are just finishing a bespoke kitchen and stunning elliptical staircase in a Kilkenny house.
Do they think the changing economic climate, and the coming of retailers such as Ikea, will change their business?
"No," they both say in absolute agreement. People will always appreciate well-made furniture, the beauty of craft. A table bought from them will not lose its value, they say, and there are enough people who still appreciate that.
I haven't come to Bennetsbridge empty handed. In the car is a Shaker-style chair, belonging to a friend. She bought it from Mosse before he went to Australia the first time and it is now in need of some TLC.
Mosse gives a smile of recognition when he sees it, running his hands down the smooth surface of the wood. I half-expect him to say it's irreparable, there is a crack in the wood that has been half-fixed with a metal bracket. Instead he is lost in the possibilities. "I could open that out, insert a piece . . ." and he's off, there is no danger the chair can't be saved. These are pieces of furniture for life. And for the future.
Keith Mosse Craftsman in Wood, Bennetsbridge, Co Kilkenny. For information, call 056-7727860 or see www.keithmosse.com