Lynn Jones - interview
So why did Dr Lynn Jones, now head of furniture at Buckinghamshire New University in the historic furniture town of High Wycombe, chose to continue studying despite having two job offers made during her graduate show?
Words by Emily Martin
'I was thinking about doing fine art or interior design. I didn't realise you could do furniture design as a degree until that day. I was completely, completely, smitten and immediately applied because I was so excited about it.' Dr Lynn Jones is describing the day, many years before her doctorate, that she realised she wanted to be a furniture designer.
It was after listening to a talk at her art foundation course college by a student who was doing his BA in furniture design at Trent Polytechnic in Nottingham. As a teenager in Stockport in the early Eighties furniture design was her calling, Jones says. 'Up until this moment I was following an art and design path,' explains Jones, head of the department of furniture at Buckinghamshire New University (BNU). 'Previously I had never made a connection with furniture design. The tenuous link that I sometimes use is that my mum worked as an upholsterer and she was always upholstering things around the house.'
Learning that the course was a four-year one was also a significant factor for Jones, as it included a year's working placement in industry. 'For that reason alone, I saw it as something that would give me a job!' she says, recalling her life plan then as being one of 'self sufficiency.' Nevertheless, it wasn't until towards the end of her degree that Jones decided to continue studying, despite already receiving two jobs offers during her degree show from Nottingham. Her insistence on doing an MA at Buckinghamshire College of Higher Education even amazed her tutors. 'I was so happy doing what I was doing that I didn't want to stop. My tutors said, "Everybody who completes the four-year BA walks into a job - you don't need to do an MA!"'
The MA interview, conducted by Chris Cattle, former course leader for the MA furniture design & technology, assured Jones she was doing the right thing. Himself a furniture designer, Cattle is renown for his innovative process of growing furniture by shaping living trees to form. Jones talks fondly of him and recalls her decision to relocate to the hilly Chiltern town of High Wycombe, in Buckinghamshire to do her MA. 'I did look at applying to the RCA, but I was quite shy and quiet and I was absolutely terrified by the RCA!'
Sketches from Lynn Jones's research for the Breastfeeding Chair, as part of her PhD
Visiting London for the first time Jones says that she found it a daunting place. When being interviewed by Cattle, at what was then Bucks College of Higher Education, Jones says it felt right. 'It was really nice and friendly and Chris was amazing - he spent the whole day with me,' she recalls. 'I liked him and liked the workshops.'
Her MA design research on the topic 'furniture to encourage people to do gentle exercise' led Jones to explore women's exercise needs between puberty and menopause. Little did she know then, in 1987, that her MA project would later connect with her PhD project in 2005 on 'the research, design and concept development of a new chair to meet the needs of women breastfeeding'.
'I actually started my MA researching office furniture, because I thought that would help me get a job,' says Jones, smiling at her all-too familiar mind-set. 'Office furniture was really popular in the Eighties and everyone was going to work in that industry. But I got very bored of researching office furniture!' Cattle encouraged Jones to rethink her research subject, which resulted her changing her research brief. 'He said, "Do something that you'll really enjoy and get excited by", so I changed my subject in the first term to explore exercise and physiology,' she explains. And it was her MA work that caught the attention of bosses at Desking Systems, which Jones was offered her first job.
Working there for two years under the guidance of former Steelcase and Gordon Russell design director Barry Wilson, Jones then went on to freelance before accepting a job at Coventry College in 1990. Jones says it was discovering a multi-approach work ethic - whether employed, a freelance or (as she personally was discovering) a 'portfolio' worker - that led her into teaching. 'I just thought everyone got a job with a company and a salary. It wasn't until later that I realised that there are many different ways of working,' she says.
'I decided that I wanted to help other people realise what I had realised, and so I went into teaching to show how the skills you gain from doing furniture design can lead into other things.'
The breastfeeding chair is now manufactured by Union Designs and is marketed as the Kensington Chair
Despite having no teaching experience, Jones taught as course leader in Coventry for four years before moving to Oxfordshire to teach at Rycotewood College in Thame. Jones maintains a close working relationship with the college after setting up the National School of Furniture (NSF) in 2010 at BNU, which partners industry and the design courses at both BNU and Rycotewood Furniture Centre.
Being an inspiration for her students Jones's story is not only a fascinating one but also an example of how many and varied skills can be gained from the design industry - even if Jones's own account is a little more modest, claiming 'good fortune' as the reason she was offered a teaching position back at Bucks in 1996. Initially teaching on the 3D multidisciplinary design course, Jones took over as course leader of the MA furniture design & technology course the following year, the same course from which she had graduated, following Cattle's decision to retire.
During our chat, Jones talks frequently about 'change' and it is a subject she speaks very optimistically about. Yet with the BNU's controversial decision to close two of its undergraduate furniture courses (BA furniture and BA furniture conservation), and public backlash to this decision, wouldn't any passionate person be left disappointed? Not Jones. 'The MA course is changing to reflect the current climate, and it always has done so,' she says with an open mind. 'The university and its industry supporters (via the NSF board) are refocusing on delivering courses, which includes its MA courses, that reflect industry needs and that students are attracted to.'
Sited in the historic furniture-making town of High Wycombe, the university this year conducted a review of some of its undersubscribed, and some may say over-resourced, undergraduate courses to test how they reflected the current economic climate and trends. It revealed an increasing popularity among young people for screen-based subjects, such as digital and games design. '[In closing the two courses] the university was also responding to the fact that undergraduate design courses aren't so specialist in their disciplines any more,' adds Jones. 'I suppose we're the last university to align some of the courses with specialisms such as product design and interior design.'
Jones designed the Zero office system in 1987 while working at Desking Systems
Asked about what has changed since she graduated, Jones says there's a noticeably different attitude to work that is reflective of the present economic climate. 'Students from the MA courses are going into jobs that are much more fluid and flexible these days,' she says. 'There are not the same roles with an in-house design department anymore as what we used to call a company designer.'
Working within an ever-evolving industry it's understandable that people lose sight of what it is (or was) that enticed them there in the first place. By broadening horizons, Jones has shown how someone's passion for design is free to evolve, grow and change - creating new opportunities as opposed to dead-ends. It's a message she is keen to continue passing on to the would-be designers of the future.
