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 13March
[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 CraftMuseum. 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 ModernArt 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
PineHardwood
Pine BowHardwood 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
AxeChippings
Sack bales
The jarDirt
The knifeParings
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….