Woodland Heritage is delighted to announce that the winner of this year’s Peter Savill Award is John Makepeace OBE.
John Makepeace (L) receiving the Peter Savill Award from Guy Corbett-Marshall (R) of Woodland Heritage.
John is an internationally recognised designer and furniture maker, the latter shown by having received Lifetime Achievement Awards from the American Furniture Society in 2004 and the Furniture Makers Company, London in 2010.
As the eighteenth sole or joint winner of the Peter Savill Award, John Makepeace’s background may at first seem as though he is more maker than grower, but when one looks further, his work over many decades in the disciplines that the Peter Savill Award covers (silviculture, research, wood processing, marketing, and education) would be hard to match.
Through a furniture commission for Longleat House, John was introduced to the excellent forest estate there. Having seen the benefits of forestry integrated with the construction and manufacturing industries in Europe, he resolved, rather than training more individual designers and makers, to explore the better use of our indigenous forest produce in the UK.
In 1982, just six years after buying Parnham House in Dorset, within which he then housed studios and a residential College for aspiring furniture designers and makers, John’s Parnham Trust purchased from the Forestry Commission Hooke Park, a 350-acre broadleaves and conifer forest nearby.
Under his direction, working with forester, Andrew Poore, and a team of eminent architects and engineers, John built the new campus there using the low value thinnings for all the structural components.
This involved cross-disciplinary research at five European Universities to develop the new technologies and to secure Building Approval.
International recognition and several architectural and conservation awards followed. In 2001, the Trust amalgamated with the Architectural Association, the international school of Architecture, which now runs its ‘design and build’ courses at Hooke Park.
Most recently, John Makepeace has created a co-ordinated programme of work with partners such as the Architectural Association, the Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A) and the Royal Society of Arts (RSA), the collective theme being to inspire people to bring wood into their lives as a way to solve contemporary issues.
In February, John and the V&A launched Make Good: Rethinking Material Futures, a ten-year project that encompasses an annual display, a symposium, a summer school, and a programme of acquisitions dedicated to looking at the use of renewable, natural materials and the future of sustainable forestry in connection with design and architecture, using under-utilised indigenous timbers, where possible.
With a lifetime of accomplishment, yet still with the vision and drive to do more, John Makepeace is indeed a worthy recipient of the Peter Savill Award, a prize that enables Woodland Heritage to recognise each year the contribution of an individual who has significantly benefited British forestry.