ianmilliss

I'd like to second the comments about rainforest timbers, one further problem with this piece and probably many of the others.

We are now entering an era where sustainability and carbon reduction are life-or-death issues with the potential for an enormous increase in all sorts of products made of some types of wood (eg bamboo and quick growing plantation eucalypts and pines) because of their ability to rapidly sequester carbon. Meanwhile there will be a complete ban on other timbers because of rainforest destruction, as Henning comments. This has interesting possibilities that magazines like FW should address - consider the fact that some of the most admired styles like Biedermeier and Shaker furniture are the creative result of very constrained timber choices.

Above all every type of cultural production including woodwork has a moral dimension as the Shakers fully understood. Both editors and readers should think hard about where a taste for profligate use of resources and careless waste has led their society. Many comments have claimed some special status for this winner as art and to the degree that it portrays the useless excess of western society it could be seen as art but better artists also try to model the future in their work, to lead viewers to an understanding of how the world needs to be in the future or at least to recognise more clearly the faults in a conventional view of the present.

In that context FW should be more forward looking. As well as these show-off gallery type contests why not set contests with several months lead time where we are set a type of woodworking problem and we can see what solutions people can come up with eg how to replace a variety of products that are currently made in plastic with a wooden equivalent?

I really don't want to diss what would be a technically impressive bit of work in any other context but a major element of good design is appropriateness, fitness for intended use, and it's hard to imagine anything less appropriate than this winner - just putting tools inside a cabinet does not make it a tool chest. The editors' choices over time really do seem to have a taste for uncreative nostalgic styles and overdone technique bordering on kitsch. This is another fiasco almost as bad as the recycled wood contest that was won by a project that wasn't made of recycled wood.

I think it's about time that readers got to vote, or at least that the thumbs up got laid out so we could see more easily which projects got the most reader approvals. I think the Tom Fidgen toolbox would be my choice for good design, innovation and all round creativity and realmccoys in second place for a very well done and appropriately designed large tool chest.

The bench and the white ash tree house are both beautiful but I'd like to add my protest vote here, if the project wasn't made from timber that had already been used to make something else previously then it should not have been allowed. There is also an aesthetic that tends to come with recycled and reclaimed timber that accepts flaws and marks of a previous life and far too many of the projects overworked their wood to hide that - they may aswell have been made of new timber. For the record my favourites were the Rest room at rear table, its companion stacked cube and the reclaimed wood end table (yes I liked the red castors!).

You need to run this contest again, this time for real.

Ignore all the comments above - amateur woodworkers sadly have a tendency to nostalgic tastes, at best, and very bad taste at worst. Just look at all the reproduction and pastiche stylesthat woodwork magazines are filled with. I think the castors look perfectly okay, they suit the minimal industrial style of the whole piece and it makes good use of the type of small offcuts we all have heaps of. I like it.