Training Directory

Summary: Textiles is broad industry that thrives on innovation and ideas. A BA/BSc in Textiles will support your development towards a career as a Textile Designer, Surface Designer or Textile Craft Practitioner, allowing you to connect your creative potential to the wide-ranging possibilities that this diverse subject area has to offer.

Summary: Explore and ultimately specialise in print, knit, weave or embroidery. Our academic and technical staff will help you gain practical hands-on skills, using hand techniques and digital technology, that can lead to the creation of materials and products used in the worlds of fashion, interiors or craft.

Summary: This week-long programme provides an exciting opportunity for eight talented students to learn traditional cabinetmaking and marquetry techniques from master craftspeople, from material selection to advanced finishing techniques. Over the course of six days, students make a piece of furniture each which forms a vehicle for learning skills required to make in industry at the highest level. Throughout the week, visiting lecturers in craft and design share their viewpoints and experience. Students are encouraged to explore and develop their own mindset and approach to making creatively and accurately, in order to hone their furniture making skills. In addition to the practical work, students will spend a day in the woods with a forester to discuss trees, growing and the process of harvesting and converting trunks to useful timber. They will also visit a professional furniture workshop to glue up their marquetry tops, meet practitioners and see real working environments.

Summary: This programme aims to educate and train graduate furniture designers in the value of wood as a sustainable and beautiful material for the production of design-led furniture. This design and making programme, for a small cohort of six students, will establish an understanding of the process from woodland management to design and production. Tuition fees and materials are covered by The King’s Foundation Scholarships through the generosity of its donors. Students will be guided by a Lead Furniture Tutor renowned in their field and supported by a School Manager and Workshop Assistant. Students are given time and guidance to experiment with timber in many forms to create new and exciting concepts for exploiting this adaptable material. In addition , students will be given exercises in batch producing furniture, an introduction to woodland management; growing trees for timber, as well as experience in planking and drying wood, all of which will inform a series of design briefs, leading to made furniture prototypes. Students will look at optimising timber as an environmentally sound material and develop and produce items of furniture that illustrate a sustainable and imaginative approach to this wonderful natural resource.

Summary: This programme, for existing makers, aims to develop fine furniture making skills through a series of masterclasses using British timber. This programme, for a small cohort of eight students, will develop an understanding of our native British timber from woodland management, through to design considerations, utilising the unique properties of different timbers whilst developing fine furniture and traditional hand skills. The course will encourage a respect for the traditional making skills which are key to producing high end work of quality and from a sustainable source. Developing a set of core skills which are transferable between projects will give a maker confidence to experiment and develop their own signature style. When delivered with flair and care, these traditional skills can transform a makers portfolio above that of modern, batch produced items, which hold little long term value for the owner.

Summary: The 12-week course will give you a solid foundation in furniture making and an introduction to design. Intensive and practical: You will learn about wood and material choice, hand skills, power-tool and machine-use through several practical making projects. Theory from timber technology to 3D-construction will support the practical work, and you’ll have the option of a level 3 qualification. Using your new found skills you will also make a final piece of your own design.

Summary: By the end of this course, you will be able to: Understand the safe and practical use of a workshop environment Name and correctly use different upholstery materials and hand tools Rip down a chair safely and efficiently Understand the traditional techniques required to complete your chair inc. webbing, tacking, stuffing, rolled and stitched edges Professionally finish, including the application of the top fabric, bottom cloth and different trims Consider the sustainability potential of upholstery through the reupholstering of your old chair frames. Considering the materials involved, there journey and life expectancy.