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Kim Francis.
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Chris Francis. Francis Furniture
Francis Furniture have been operating locally with a full showroom and workshop in Port Macquarie since 1982. Building beautiful custom designed pieces, Kim and Chris Francis love facing new challenges, and working with the natural characteristics of different timbers. Chris tells us about his experience over the years.
H
ow did you gain your experience working with the many different types of timber species?
My experience comes from a very early age when I developed a love of timber, building kites and boats as a young kid. From there I began to experiment and learn about the different timbers, and completed formal training at Ultimo Technical College. One of my first loves of timber was of a beautiful piece of Cedar which a friend’s father made into a boat. It was that beautiful deep rich red Cedar that I just fell in love with, the rich and wondrous fragrance’s of Cypress Pine and Coachwood, what variety, I was hooked ... over the years I decided that I wanted to work with timber, so I became a boat builder. I worked with many different timbers, and it just grew from there on. Experts in custom design furniture pieces, what makes timber furniture so unique? As far as the timber is concerned, every piece of timber is unique. We’ve had experiences where we can pick a board and think it looks fine, we size it up with another board get a fairly even colour match across a panel. But if you cut it in half and lay the ends side by side, suddenly you could get a black and white board. You don’t realise how much the colour has changed from one end of the board to the other, let alone across the width of it. It’s surprising the amount of variation you can have in one piece of timber that you don’t notice until you put the boards right beside each other. I don’t regard a colour change in timber as being a fault at all, it’s the natural beauty of the variations in the timber. Also adding to it’s uniqueness, some timbers have ‘scribbly gum grub’ marks,
mostly in Rose Gum and Blue Gum, which looks fantastic and really shows you the history of the tree as it was growing. It gives you some insight into what happened to that tree during it’s life, and this could be a 100 year old tree. The durability of timber furniture is also a unique trait, and can last hundreds of years. At Francis Furniture we make pieces to last, rather than having a customer come back for a repair job in 5 years time. We’re more interested in creating an heirloom that will be passed down through generations, and there is no reason why these pieces won’t still be in great condition in 200 years time. In regards to custom building, we design our pieces and draw the plans out for people so that they can get a really good idea of what the piece will look like in their space. A lot of people find it difficult to actually picture what they want and how it will look, so this new technology allows us to draw it up right in front of them, and give the customer a real concept of the finished product. This 3D program draws items to scale and you really have the full perspective, making the customer more confident about the finished product. What are some of the challenges faced when crafting your timber pieces? The challenges are usually given to us by the customers themselves. Sometimes they will come up with a bit of a difficult design brief, the odd thing is that even after nearly 50 years of working with timber, I am always learning something new and facing new challenges that are set. Sometimes the timber can have particular characteristics that will make it difficult to use in that situation. Some timbers
might expand or contract, so you have to recognise this depending on the type of piece being built. The other challenge would be the grain of the timber and ensuring it is shown off in the best possible way in that particular piece of furniture. What are the benefits of having timber furniture pieces in the home? Everybody loves timber, it’s a beautiful product with its natural grain and abstract swirls. It’s also the feel of timber - it is warm to the touch, for example if you’re going to sit in a chair - would you prefer to sit in a steel chair or a timber chair? You’re always going to choose the timber chair … It’s the same if you had a choice between a glass table and a timber table. When you put your hands on a glass table it’s cold. Timber tables are always earthy and warm, it’s a natural living thing. How is your website a handy tool for customers? We’d like people to feel comfortable visiting our website, allowing them to browse a larger range of pieces than we could ever have in the showroom on display. We do a lot of custom built pieces, so we can’t possibly have them all on the floor. So we feel it’s ideal for customers to be able go to the website, browse the pictures and see more of what we do. People can then see what we are capable of and can customise the designs they like to suit their own style. I think this also gives the customer a sense of confidence that we can do the job, and that we can produce a beautiful piece, before they have actually walked into our show room. Thanks Chris and Kim. greater port macquarie focus 93