The next OPEN-HOUSE at Temperance Cottage: Subject to Welsh Government regulations on Coronavirus will be announced in due course. Whichever day this turns out to be, the timings will always be from 10.00am-5.00pm. Swansea, UK.
Had a very successful Arts in the Tawe Valley 4th Annual Art Week. My very first ‘open-days’ were the 8th and 9th of June, followed by Sunday 4th of August 2019 with a modest and interested turn-out of 26 people.
Check out the website for further details!
Philip offers a range of finished chairs (see Portfolio below) and furniture for sale. All pieces are built from green and/or seasoned wood. Philip uses locally sourced (Wales/UK) Oak, Poplar, Ash, Douglas-fir, Birch and Hazel with a certified traceable provenance.
You can contact Philip via email here to discuss existing pieces, commissions, size requirements, style, colours, finishes, costs, delivery and collection.
Please supply your name and contact details for personalised updates and developments at Temperance Cottage. Monthly electronic Newsletters will include information on Stick chair making, Breadmaking and the Welsh Micro-Bothy, workshop dates, demonstrations and shows. Occasional paper-based small brochures are available on request. In 2020, Philip is intending to publish his guide to ‘The Welsh Stick Chair’, which will be available as both a paper and electronic online publication.
Download the on-line issue #0l: ‘micro-brochure’
Temperance Cottage is offering a series of workshops throughout the summer and autumn for making a traditional three-legged Welsh stool; cheap and simple traditional French artisanal hand-baking of bread. Two day, single or half day experiences can be supplied for individuals, through small groups up to six. Email your queries for dates, times and costs. Philip can also run these or larger workshops at your own venue as desired.
Philip is always delighted to show visitors the facilities and pieces-in-stock at Temperance Cottage. Please do make an appointment in advance, in case he is out and about foraging, demonstrating or bartering! He is at Cwmllynfell towards the top of the Swansea Valley, less than a mile due south of the Black Mountain of the Brecon Beacons National Park. Further details are supplied with the newsletter.
The Product Description and Price Guide contains approximate information. This is subject to options and variations chosen, material availability and complexity. You will, in any instance be supplied with a NO OBLIGATION quote and a projected time-frame.
Select below to download the pdf. measurements form and a pdf. product description, price guide and order form.
Measurements Form
Product Description, Price Guide & Order Form
Scroll down to check-out recent Welsh Stick Chairs and other pieces of furniture from Philip at Temperance Cottage. Please note in the captions that some pieces have already been sold, but almost identical matches can be built.
Live workshops underway in Bread-making by hand at Temperance Cottage. Four happy customers and six more booked in at May 2019.
Further information on Food, drink and the garden at Temperance Cottage can be found on the ‘sister’ wordpress site here:
Baking, Brewing and the Garden at Temperance Cottage
The Blog is an occasional online diary of developments at Temperance Cottage, including the building, or rather ‘re-building’ of a former derelict garden shed as a Bothy. Traditionally a bothy, or ‘Bwthyn’ was a single room stone dwelling place, to be found in some isolation for the shelter of land-workers, travellers and other itinerant individuals. Projects to come include a vegetable patch, work studio, bread oven and small forge.
April 2018: Making use of the seasonally warm weather for the maintenance of the southern track-side hedge. Selecting and cutting stick lengths for chair-making spindles. The hedge consists of Hazel, Ash and Holly intertwined with Bramble, Ivy and some crab Apple. The garden has been neglected for over a decade, the sticks haven’t all grown straight, but there is an abundance of suitable pieces that can be used in the furniture with some corrective ‘steam’ or ‘dry-heat’ bending. A nice chance to apply some knot-skills to bundle and transport the sticks in time honoured tradition! I’ve used the Midshipman’s Hitch (in the picture above) which means that the bundle can be tightened up or slackened off as needed.
INSPIRED BY THE SOCIAL, ECONOMIC and political downturn about to befall all of our lives, The Illustrated Brexit News is a subscription publication, currently under construction by Urban Z Guide. It is an open Anarchist ‘Zine that welcomes contributions from writers, artists and thinkers from all self-defining origins with a broad general brief requesting material of a ‘pro-active’ independent, optimistic and useful nature. Essentially, collective advice, guidance, sharing and reflection on the way that we currently live our lives with a view to how we are going to have to live our lives. Subject, preoccupation and focus can be as varied as contributors feel might be personally and collectively useful, with, for example, the preparing, growing/cultivating food, ‘country and artisan-skills’ with workshops, building, shelter, sharing, surviving, communicating and making the most of our resources, maximising recycling and up cycling with the least impact on our environment and planet. Contributions are especially welcome from those already living a more holistic alternative life, with experiences of coping with shortages, crises economic privations and the like.
THIS GRAPHIC Novella has been inspired by my life at Temperance Cottage. In a moment of disengagement with conventional employment, the opportunity to create and explore has temporarily arisen. So here we go…
From a decade of skinny soya-latte we begin the descent into the primordial condition of scavenger-gatherers. Informed by our inhabiting the former liberal-elite bubble, we seek nuts and seed; flax, linseed, sunflower and the darker insider-greens like kale and bok choi. Skinny too my fonts become, with muscle wastage, but seeking desperately to retain essential metals for bone and sanity. I thought this time would not come during my time. Now it is here. A hollow knock from the doorstep.
Dwelling amongst the excess of festivities, I’m mapping out a plan of action for 2017. A year, I suspect that will be most unlike any other. Now is the time and here is the place to put our creativity into practice, to publish and be damned. These pages are pedagogic in intent, but just as much for myself as for anyone else. Tuning up on Adobe Illustrator CC, font play, traditional paper-publishing and electronic layout grids being at the fore of my mind. My anticipation is for the first of the Graphic Novels. There is no place like home and no time like the present. To misappropriate one of Mr. Spielberg’s fine film dialogues, ‘we’re all going to need portable wealth in the coming months’. Indeed years.
Good luck everyone.
2016. A NEW YEAR AND A DIFFERENT DIRECTION in life. An opportunity for a clean take and exploration of my own personal ID. Whenever I have worked for an institution, I’ve always been bar-coded, badged and branded for ease of identity around the sites where I’ve worked. It is not just me that is being identified, but the corporation at large. The badge is saying that, categorically, i’m part of the product. Not quite just a cog in a wheel, but an ambassador and a representative. This I found to be subtly and strangely empowering. As if wearing a uniform or carrying a taser. This got me into considering creating a mock version for myself, or series of versions for all of my different occupations. These could be extended to represent my preoccupations, hobbies and even alter-egos. A discrete version of ‘cosplay’. Something I could wear while out and about exploring and one containing a live QR code that I could offer as a form of credential. This could be swapped or given to interested parties, as a point of social contact. A form of ‘business card’ exchange for this digital age. The design would be something along the lines of the wartime ‘national identity card’ that was talked of being reinstated a few years back, but with more irreverence. I wanted to create something more joyful. Mischievous even, gently deprecating the authority of the genuine article. Building my own unverified and conspicuously fake formality. A design embracing the spirit of the paper bracelets we get wrist-tagged with at concert events and live-in festival campsites; then combining this with the ‘vintage’ feel of period documents and stationery. Ones with authoritative franking marks and the passport style ‘mug shot’. I also like the tongue-in-cheek idea of a ‘creative’ as emergency service personnel. I’m a POET, now please let me through.
While neither the idea nor artwork are fully resolved as yet, (I’m thinking neon and more ‘hipster/psychodelic’ fonts with underground symbolism needed here) the project is underway and is getting me thinking of more ideas to apply. I’ll get them printed for real and into a lanyard next, for adventures about town and clubbing amongst dereliction.
Stay up-to-date with Temperance Cottage Press and Philip with this web-log and his recently created website at:
temperancecottage.wordpress.com
Issue One of my A5 Zine on sub-urban exploration, A casual travelogue for the Sub-Urban Explorer is nearly at completion. The design of the front cover has benefitted with the addition of a colour tint top bar to pull the piece together. The text Essays in Dust stands at 5k words approximately and sits across two column pages amongst a series of my photographs. My intention is to produce more manipulated collage like visual work and to get back into hand drawn traditional illustration as well as using the Wacom drawing tablet.
Philip is an Adobe Certified Associate in Print and Media for Digital Publication. He lives at Temperance Cottage in the foothills of the Black Mountain of the Brecon Beacons National Park. His organic gardening, food and drink blog is at temperancecottage.wordpress.com
It has just this minute occurred to me that being short-sighted has some distinct advantages in helping make decisions about fonts. Taking my glasses off is excellent for assessing issues of font colour, weight and legibility. The density and distribution of horizontal and vertical strokes and the visual dropout this can cause is readily apparent. Glasses-on tells me about the perceptions of the averagely sighted norm. More difficult is to anticipate the accommodation of the long-sighted.
I’m in the process of making type and colour adjustments to my Temperance Cottage ‘gardening, baking and brewing’ site logo. Initially, this was to be an exercise in creating a vector based identity symbol using Adobe Illustrator. I had decided on imaging a cider making apple crusher or ‘scratter-mill’, with text as a secondary component. Having created my hybrid illustration, with separately movable wheel parts for an animation idea later on, I then become focused on what font to use. My subconscious voice prompted me to look at the classical, the antique and the elegant. A font series that might conjure up notions of the 17th Century Pamphleteers. Cold metal press, single-page prints of a period aesthetic on hot-pressed folio paper stock. Fonts empathetic to the notion of inky-fingered John Bull Print Set evenings by the fire. Artisan engraved letter matricies for books hand bound as limited editions, crafted along the lines and principles of John Ruskin and William Morris’ neo-classical Arts and Crafts Movement. Even an invitation to Gertrude Jekyll’s summer garden party. Bring your own shovel.
The type foundry work of English sculptor Eric Gill (Perpetua, Joanna, Aries), and a Midlands favourite, the work of Birmingham city boy, John Baskerville (Baskerville) and his upright secular burial immediately came to mind. Giambattista Bodoni, a Baskerville follower, being another contender and even Paul Renner’s Bauhaus Sans-Serif masterpiece Futura. This seemed as though it could lend a fun clean aesthetic to the narrative. However, after a bit of ‘playtime with fonts’, Frederick W Goudy’s 1915 Goudy Old Style seemed to fit the bill on this occasion, as did Claude Garamont’s Garamond of the mid sixteenth century. (note variant name spellings of author and work!)
As it stands, I have decided to use Goudy Old Style for the main title and Garamond italic for the main body of work. Adobe TypeKit’s clean and contemporary Open Sans has been used for the web address.
Philip is an Adobe Certified Associate in Print and Digital Media Publication. He lives at Temperance Cottage in the foothills of the Brecon Beacons National Park and tends a kitchen linked to his herb, vegetable and fruit garden.
Follow his journal in graphic design, writing and exploration of the metaphysical on these other sites :
http://temperancecottage.wordpress.com
http://philipcumpstone.wordpress.com
Saturday is often best spent investing a few hours in the digital image archive, writing, drawing or generally making.
Today I was looking at Urbex images that I had taken recently at the former USAFE 620th Air base Wing; The American airborne nuclear weapons facility at Upper Heyford in Oxfordshire.
My ‘Essays in Dust’ is a short magazine project and reflection on my preoccupation with museums, preservation and the larger narrative of the history of the British Isles and the 20th Century. Last Saturday I progressed with the actual writing of the work. Essays need to be put down on paper or digitally recorded as and when critical thoughts arise and as soon as possible. There is also a case for ‘ploughing’. Putting in a determined few quality hours where, purely by the act of concentration, in peace and quiet, the ideas and poetry can be forged on the fly. Essays in Dust is a ‘Zine in progress. An A5 paper and ‘e-pub’ document that will be available to purchase sometime in the new year. Part of the project is purely functional. Using Adobe CC packages, exploring interfaces and facilities that i’ve not yet encountered or had experience with. Digital publishing techniques and processes on the one hand and finding an artisan printer to produce a limited edition run in good quality, on the other. A little bit of vanity publishing to be sure, but also a device to further and update my own portfolio. I am hugely enjoying the creative process and now have some weekday opportunities to put into practice the building of resources and physical artefacts.
Philip is an Adobe Certified Associate in Print Media and Digital Publishing. He lives at Temperance Cottage in the foothills of the Black Mountain of the Brecon Beacons National Park. Feel free to follow his blog on Food, Drink and Gardening on http://temperancecottage.wordpress.com and his Design and Publishing work on http:www.behance.net/pcumpstone
Creativity is a curious process.
I imagine that we all vary to some extent, but I find that solitude is the key. No noise, no interruptions or distraction should be in the room. Nor should the creative be subject to stress, worries, hunger, pain, fear or ancient concerns. Certainly not over missed opportunities nor nagging personal regrets, broken biscuits or missed busses.
Silence is my sound-track. When creativity manifests, it gives the best of times. The relaxed, unfettered mind searches and finds its ideas, juxtaposes its storylines and entertains its preoccupations. We become beachcombers. Ramblers, cerebral perambulators, urban explorers and flaneurs to the corridors, halls and galleries of our own psyche. Munching popcorn, happy as on an evening out at the Cartesian Theatre. Our own inner sanctum. It is then that the mind starts to invent, to make connections and sing. It is when the relationship between the subconscious and the conscious mind is most congruent. (Not just on 31 October). The convergence of silence and best thinking are coincidental but not accidental. They are often (but not exclusively) to be found at the edges of the cycle of the day. The meta~spiritual slipstream between light and dark, awake and asleep. The sub-apex inside the vortex at which we are the most calm.
During the night and the time surrounding sleep I have my book at hand and a pencil, pen, crayon or other scriveners’ implement. I hurriedly apply fleeting notions to the page. A word association, a symbol, an idea. A sentence perhaps, hoping that this will serve as a prompt to the otherwise dogmatic logical mind of the alter-ego that is the other me, the dismissive, cynical and afternoon tea me.
The rational clarity that daylight brings is infused with the scent of conformist normality. That banality that is a requirement, it would seem for the repetitive process of everyday living is at the forefront of the submissive consenting and complient mind.
The other time for creativity is when, without distraction, time can be spent with some interface or other and in silence and solitude. Quality time. Awakened silent time is required to plough and uncover the archaeological depths of feelings, ideals and inventions that are always there, if only they can be realised and allowed to weave the tapestry of the art they choose.
In the meantime, the Cider is fermenting and I must make labels for the bottles in which it is to be packaged, sold or gifted. How this comes together only my underling thinking mind has the map for. I just have to be there to push the mouse and hold the brush. To ensure also that my body does not become too cold or malnourished.
I’ve not yet created any Perry to date. The label is speculative, but I just felt that I had in mind a series of labels for portfolio application as well as an incentive to brew. The font is from the lovely Adobe Typekit, and is from a family called Open Sans.
Philip is an Adobe Certified Associate in Print and Digital Media Publishing. Follow his portfolio and progress on Behance at: www.behance.net/pcumpstone
Philip Cumpstone 