The Exchange tables and chairs are commissioned by and designed for a community-owned organisation, The Exchange Erith, who occupy the beautiful old Carnegie library in Erith. Used for different workshops and community events throughout the building, tables had to be stored away on the walls of what was once a magazine room of library, where the original wooden panels were too damaged.
The brief was also that items are to be made at the Exchange in their workshop by local people. Therefore the design consideration had to include the capability of their workshop and the equipments. We had an intensive 4 days workshop in January 2022 to teach the Exchange staff and volunteers on how to make the tables, and produce the first 4 tables together. And over the following months, the wood workshop team produced 17 tables, enough to line the entire walls of the magazine room and tables are been used in different activities everyday.
With this success, in August 2022, we repeated the same process for stacking chairs for wide use in the building. We proposed a design of simple oak frame with linen webbing seat. The workshop team and volunteers are now in the process of making 100+ chairs.
Archival picture of 'magazine room' at the old Erith library
The Exchange is a community-owned organisation that uses the heritage of Erith’s Old Library, as a space that was designed and built by local people, to inspire new community-led programmes and activities. Once neglected and run down Carnegie Library has been recently refurbished, and their mission is to reinvigorate the building as a community-built space and create a centre for local cultural change – through the sharing of expertise, ideas and community-led production.
They believe in the change that can be brought in from acts of making, and engaging with the making resulting the empowerment of the people and community. Various rooms in the Library are now assigned as different activity rooms; plant room, ceramic workshop, sewing workshop, print workshop and wood workshop.
The Exchange folding table in 'magazine room'
Detail of folding legs
Detail of folding legs
Table size was dictated by the size of the wall the tables were to be stored. This complicated the construction of folding legs, but the workshop team had embraced the challenge.
With wooden back
With webbing back
Two versions of chairs
Table and chair in Plant Room
We were so excited working with this brilliant, and brave approach that address true sustainable practice. If they can make them, they know how to fix them when broken. Therefore the Exchange wanted the furniture to be made of material with longevities and quality. With the respect to the original oak features in the room, tables are made in solid oak sourced from UK and Europe with FSC certification.
Table making workshop, January 2022
glued boards to make tops
Machined table leg parts
Processing the drilled holes with countersink bits
Sanding table top by stages
Sanding table leg parts
Assembled table are oiled
Chair making workshop, August 2022
We asked Caroline Wilkinson, a specialist in woven upholstery, to join us and to teach us how to make the linen webbing seat. We chose the webbing seats for the comfort, and also for them to be lightweight so that it's easy to stack the chairs.