Dick Ried.
The Joker in:The American Period Furniture Makers.
SAPFM,
. who Sold am imitation Chair for:£386-400, 
To show the USA Purchaser,what a genuine chair looks like? 
Little Resemblance?
Please read Reid's Crap, from his Book, 
Most Elegant & Useful Designs: Is a Book.
The Press Release,15-10-2002. 
Read on to learn more about :Dick Reid The new SAPFM,member from Australia, Jack Plane 
or:Jack Plane? Or: Dick Reid
Here is both?
Interview by Chris Title : on: 7/6/2007.
Majestic Markings.
DOZENS of pairs of eyes watch Dick Re
id as he walks through his York workshop. A five-foot high sketch of the Madonna looks down from the toilet door (the sign to the loo says 'Her Majesty's Government'). Neptune, a flawless tribute to Bernini's statue, stares crossly towards the mythical stone beast gazing out from the opposite wall. More busts and sketches dotted about the place maintain their own unblinking vigil.
They are company of a sort for Mr Reid. Yet their presence emphasises the stillness of a place which until recently echoed to the sounds of 15 master craftsmen and women, whose chisels and lathes shaped beauty, chip by chip.
In a career that began more than 50 years ago, Mr Reid has seen off the whims of architectural fashion to emerge as the pre-eminent wood and stone carver of our times.
His work is sought by Royals, Lords and Earls. From a chandelier decorated with dragon heads to a lavishly ornamented ceiling, from stunning palatial furniture to precision lettering on a memorial stone, the Reid trademark is exquisite precision.
He has trained scores of masons, carvers, gilders and modellers, building a team which could finish the grandest projects in the most intricate detail.
Soon, however, he will be moving on. Mr Reid has sold his workshop; an unprepossessing two-storey building sandwiched between two pubs in Fisher gate, and must soon vacate the premises.
That means finding a new home for maquettes, drawings, frames, furniture, machinery, countless reference books and 500 hand tools. A collection of teaching ornaments in key styles - including Baroque, Rococo and Gothic Victorian - is destined for the Institute of Classical Architecture in New York.
What about everything else? 'You tell me,' he sighs.
His finished work can be found in some of the greatest buildings in Britain and abroad: the Minster and Fairfax House in York; the Savoy Theatre and Royal Opera House in London; the Saudi Royal Palace in Riyadh. His team of craftsmen and women oversaw a large part of the restoration of Spencer House, home of Lord Rothschild: each of five major chimney pieces took 8,000 man hours to finish.
He has created seven memorials in Westminster Abbey, from broadcaster Richard Dibble and poet John Betjeman among others. After supervising the restoration of the Carlton House Trophies, damaged in the fire at Windsor Castle, he was rewarded with a personal letter of thanks and a medallion from the Queen Elizabeth 11.
Mr Reid has worked closely with her son for 17 years after Prince Charles asked him to become a trustee of his Institute of Architecture, now the Prince's Foundation for the Built Environment. The invitation came about after Mr Reid, twice elected president of the Master Carvers' Association, spoke out in favour of apprenticeships as against Novas.
He was invited to lunch at Kensington Palace. There were about 12 people sitting round the table including the Prince,' Mr Reid says.
'After the main course he stood up, tapped his glass and said he was saddened that this 2,000-year canon of knowledge was no longer being taught,He felt that British architecture students were at a great disadvantage, and Reid wanted to open a school of architecture.'
Mr Reid has been on Prince Charles board ever since. A recent contribution was teaching students on a residential course organised by the Prince's Foundation in York last summer.
The royal relationship made one of his subsequent commissions a little awkward. He was asked to make the
memorial urn for Princess Diana's grave at Althorn.
'The most difficult thing about that was telling the Prince, after the speech in Westminster Abbey by Earl Spencer,' he recalls.
'I had to tell the Prince. I didn't know how to do it. I rang his secretary and said, "what's the best way?'"
'She said, "We’ll wait for the Three Choirs Festival in Worcester. It's a long car journey and we're always stuck for something to talk about, so we'll tell him then".'
Such majestic dilemmas are a far cry from his upbringing in Newcastle, where he committed the Geordie equivalent of heresy. 'I refused to play football for the school team. Everyone in Newcastle was football mad so I was classed as mentally deranged,' Reid says.
'They banned me from games and gave me set work. I drifted into the art room and the handicrafts room and ended up building the sets and furniture for the school play.
'At the 1949 end-of-term open day, I had one room full of work and the rest of the school had the other.'
An astute teacher recommended him to craftsman Ralph Hedley, who took him on as an apprentice carver aged 15. National Service brought Mr Reid to York in 1956 where he developed a social circle 'when the Duke of Kent was taking young Katie Worley to the pictures'.
He decided to set up shop in the city, originally in Grape Lane near the Minster, but it was the worst possible time to be a traditional ornamental craftsman. 'Modernism killed
The applied crafts. It was G-plan furniture and modern architecture with no carving, no ornament. It took 30 years for that to come back.'
He married in 1965 (he has two grown-up sons) and supplemented his income by teaching, until a belated awareness of the importance of conservation and restoration developed later in the decade. Suddenly Mr Reid was one of the few people with the skills required - skills which have their origins in the remarkable decorative work done by members of the York craft guilds in medieval times.
Now 73, and 'very, very sad' at the prospect of leaving the workshop behind, Mr Reid can take comfort from knowing his awe-inspiring creations in stone and wood will long stand as testament to his talent. And that's not his only bequest to the nation.
'The legacies I have left are the people I have trained. Everybody who's been through here is successful,' he says.
Looking back to his beginnings as a teenage apprentice, he has to smile.
'The amazing thing is when I left school in 1949 my parents thought I was making a great mistake, and all my contemporaries went into training in the world of law or banking,' he says. 'Now I'm in my 70s, they're all redundant, disillusioned, golf-aphonics or alcoholics and I am working all over the world and it's exciting. So much for the professions.'
■www.yorkshirelife.co.uk
YORKSHIRE LIFE June 2007
NOTE: who wheeled Great Power and Authority in London, to order Yorkshire stone paving from: Johnson Wellfield Quarry Ltd', in Huddersfield, for the govement? which is next to: Standard fireworks Ltd, who manufacture there own products,strange how my studio was attacked & bard down: 23/1/2007, when I only use timber ( Burning Temp: 375c) glass melts at Temp:1450c ? whoops, that a difference
If any one is not Convinced :Dick Reid? is: Jack Plane? The Arse hole? Who touches studio's . Who owns: Thomas Chippendale Furniture Ltd, then retire in 2007,to the other side of the world.
Note:On the:16th October 2002. A Scam chair was Sold ? The book page :
The Most Elegant and Useful Designs
For the benefit of not traslateable? Same Chair?Carved by:Norman Holroyd, not in:1760, But in 1950. While working for: Taylor & Hobson Ltd,(Here is the 1754-1762, Ribban Back Chair)? the one sold 15/10/2002? is: 'A Splad backed Chair?Only'? Carved in 1950. at Taylor & Hobson Ltd,
The only reason why, This1851 firm
was lost to Huddersfield? West Yorkshire, UK. Because Dick Ried is a Sporny Git?
So he held? a Scam sale?When sold a For: £386-400 chair? As a genuine. Thomas Chippendale. Ribban-Back Chair? from a book Page? He had Produced, to sell it..
