My friend Andrew Whateley, who has died aged 71, was a gifted furniture maker, and a true craftsman.
He was already an accomplished woodworker by the time he left school and in 1969 he started an apprenticeship with the furniture designer John Makepeace. After becoming Makepeace’s senior cabinetmaker in Warwickshire, Andy moved with him in 1976 to his new School for Craftsmanship in Wood at Parnham House in Dorset.
The collaboration between designer and maker resulted in several important pieces of furniture. The 1977 Mitre chair of ebony and silver nickel is on the cover of Edward Lucie-Smith’s Furniture, A Concise History, published by Thames & Hudson in 1979. Landmark pieces also include the limed oak Liberty centenary dining table (1975), and the Longleat 400th anniversary table (1980), crafted using wood from the Longleat estate. This piece has Andrew’s signature as the maker alongside that of Makepeace as the designer.
After leaving Parnham to travel and work for a time in Australia, Andy returned to Britain in the early 80s to succeed Ron Lenthal as the cabinetmaker at the Royal College of Art in London. As craftsman and adviser on working with wood, Andy was responsible for many of the superb one-off pieces made in the RCA furniture department between 1982 and 1989.
Working with a student, he developed techniques to create an innovative steam-bent plank chair. Refining the technique for his own more organic design, in 1987 he won an award from the Worshipful Company of Furniture Makers that allowed him to create two highly innovative chairs in the “Windsor” tradition from green quartersawn oak planks.
Andy really wanted to make his own designs. A commission to make a box for the Georgian silver teaspoons in the RCA senior common room led to him designing and making a most beautiful scallop shell box in fiddleback sycamore. It was a virtuoso piece of craftsmanship.
Born in Stratford upon Avon into a family of cabinetmakers and furniture restorers, he was the son of Thelma (nee Webb), who worked for social services, and Ernest Whateley. He grew up surrounded by wood and furniture made by his father, and Ernest taught and inspired his son from an early age. His death when Andy was not yet seven affected him greatly throughout his life.
Andy was a quiet, kind and thoughtful man. He loved the pub, real ale and cider, darts, skittles and dominoes. He taught and inspired in many people the love of working and creating in wood.
In 1990 he moved to north Oxfordshire, hoping to set up his own workshop in the cottage he was painstakingly renovating. Until 1994, he worked for Andrew Varah near Rugby, and then for various designers including Ashley Cartwright and Suzanne Hodgson, but he suffered from ill health, including chronic back pain, and was latterly unable to work.
He is survived by his aunt, Babs, and several cousins.
