Peter Walker

Wooden Surfboards
Peter Walker
www.walkersurfboards.com
Cover image (from front): Swastika, Pointstick, Paulownia Planing Hull, Spitting, Boarder Lines, Firestick, Gun, Paisley, Burnt Fish
Copyright © 2010 Peter Walker, Mark Thomson. All boards glassed by Mark Taylor. Surfboard photography by
Grant Hancock, workshop photograph by Agnieszka Woznicka, surfer Declan Walker, photograph by Peter Walker
Catalogue design by Sandra Elms Design, printed by FiveStarPrint
From left: Swastika, 2010, 8’, Paulownia, Brazilian Cedar, Blackwood, Myrtle; Spitting, 2010, 6’6”, Paulownia, acrylic paint, artwork by Phil Hayes
JamFactory acknowledges the support and assistance of Arts SA. JamFactory is assisted by the Visual Arts
and Craft Strategy, an initiative of the Australian, State and Territory Governments. JamFactory Gallery Program
2010 is assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.
JamFactory acknowledges the generous support and assistance of its sponsor Health Promotions through the Arts.
Burnt Fish (detail), 2009, 6’4”, Paulownia, fire
This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding
and advisory body and by the Visual Arts and Craft Strategy, an initiative of the Australian, State and Territory Governments.
Pointstick, 2010, 9’6”, Paulownia, Brazilian Cedar
JamFactory Contemporary Craft and Design
19 Morphett Street, Adelaide, South Australia 5000, tel +618 8410 0727, www.jamfactory.com.au
Curator, Exhibitions Manager: Margaret Hancock, Gallery Assistant: Kara Growden
From left: Paulownia Planing Hull, 2010, 5’4”, Paulownia, ink artwork by Gerry Wedd; Boarder Lines, 2010, 7’6”, Paulownia, Wenge, artwork by Stephen Bowers
This catalogue accompanies the exhibition Making Waves, 11 September – 17 October 2010
In this exhibition of handmade surfboards, Peter Walker pays tribute to the design form that is used to
achieve these streaks of brilliance.
When Captain James Cook’s expedition arrived in Kealakekua
Bay on the Kona Coast of Hawaii’s Big Island in 1778, the
Europeans were amazed to see the local people riding the
waves on long wooden planks. This ‘great art’ (he’e nalu
or ‘wave sliding’ as it was described in Hawaiian language)
almost died out as a result of pressure from Christian
missionaries to discourage Hawaiians from surfing. The fact
that there was a powerful spiritual component to the activity
– from building the boards to praying for waves – must have
been difficult for the strait-laced European missionaries
to grasp.
Finless Double-ender, 2009, 6’, Paulownia, Western Red Cedar, multiple woods
It wasn’t until the early 20th century that surfing started to
spread around the world as Hawaiian Olympic swimmer and
surfer Duke Kahanamoku and others gave demonstrations
in the US West Coast and elsewhere. Kahanamoku’s surfing
appearance in Australia in 1914 at Freshwater Beach near
Manly, NSW, caused a sensation and set in train what was
to ultimately become a robust local surfing culture.
The early Hawaiian surfboards, made in a wide variety of sizes
to suit riders, style and wave size, were of solid construction
and were very heavy in comparison to today’s surfboards but
the characteristic streamlined shape was abundantly evident
even then. As a designed form, the surfboard had gone
through a simple evolution in pre-industrial Hawaii but once
the surfboard met the industrial cultures of the US, Australia
and elsewhere, the relatively static form and construction
was subjected to a hothouse process of design refinement.
One early change was to drill and plug holes in the solid board
– an innovation of Tom Blake (1902-1994), an American who
went to live in Hawaii in the 1920s and was an early proponent
of the surfing lifestyle. Tom Blake also invented the skeg or
‘fin’ which helped stabilise the board and built lighter, more
manoeuvrable hollow boards. Blake came to characterise
much that was notable about surfing and surfboard design
and Walker acknowledges his contribution in this exhibition
by utilising principles of his hollow frame innovations.
Another surfboard designer that Peter Walker references is
Californian Bob Simmons (1919-1954). In the post Second
World War period, Simmons matched the new technologies
of fibreglass, Styrofoam, epoxy resin and plywood construction
with his experience as an aircraft engineer and his fascination
with Swiss mathematician Daniel Bernoulli’s (1700 -1782)
theory that an increase in the velocity of a fluid
results in decreasing pressure and the creation
of dynamic lift. Simmons’ resulting explorations
into planing hulls, rail contours and the dynamics
of drag and turbulence have greatly influenced the
evolution of surfboard design. Peter acknowledges
this vital design contribution in the 5’2” Mini
Simmons that incorporates many of these features.
(It must be mentioned that all Peter’s surfboards
are functional.)
Both the Blake and Simmons design influences
are only the tip of a design evolution process. That
design process – entailing trials with different tails,
fin configurations, board lengths, widths and many
other variables, continues unabated up until the
present day. The types of waves being surfed also
changed: the elegant 8’ Gun in this exhibition for
instance is a specialised board whose dynamics only
come into play when ridden on the monster big
waves that were once considered impossible to surf.
What to the untutored eye is a pleasing but
apparently simple shape is the product of endless
trials from Byron Bay and Banzai Pipeline to
Malibu and Torquay. The form is the result of
countless discussions in the beach car-park or at
the board shapers in industrial sheds near a beach
somewhere. Every surfer has an opinion about how
their board works and about how it can be improved,
which has resulted in a vigorous and democratic
design evolution.
Ultimately, the might of a wave and the finer points
of fluid dynamics dictate much of what will work.
To this design history Peter brings his personal
furniture making and design experience. Discussing
making these boards, Peter says that making
surfboards is a lot more interesting than making
furniture. Perhaps it is the discipline required to
make an object that needs to work in a very intense
environment. There’s every building/making/
construction challenge of furniture and more: it’s
the complete package of art, design, craftsmanship
and science. And when it comes down to the crunch
the board either works or it doesn’t.
One traditional woodworking skill that Peter has
made considerable use of in this exhibition is
parquetry, notably on the Finless Double-ender.
The 8’ Swastika board has not only a 1930s style cut
off tail but has inlaid marquetry in a herringbone
pattern reminiscent of wooden boat decking. It’s
a charming combination of old and new.
Peter superimposes another layer on his review
of surfboard design: decoration. The original
Hawaiian boards were plain wood, as some are
in the exhibition but by the 1960s, surfboards had
become a canvas for visual expression. Drawing
on influences from psychedelic LP album art, car
spray painting, comics and Hawaiian shirt design,
the decorated surfboard became an artistic vehicle
as much as a marine one.
Peter has asked a number of artists to contribute
their own ideas to decorating boards and they range
far and wide. Stephen Bowers gives us an eternally
bemused Boofhead wandering in an antipodean
willow-patterned world. Gerry Wedd has chosen
to enlarge up the microscopic world of Paulownia
wood cells, while Phil Hayes has continued the
broad appropriation of graphics by using Chinese
calligraphy and decoration in subtle ways. In
a similar vein Quentin Gore has used traditional
Indian paisley to make an elegantly simple design
reminiscent of Indian henna Mehndi painting.
For his own part Peter contributes One True
Religion, a reference to a quote from American
art critic Dave Hickey that ‘surfing is the one true
religion’. Peter also takes board decoration into
a new sphere by subtly burning the boards over
heated rocks This is a dangerous process as hours
of careful building work could be destroyed. The
result, when glassed and smoothed, is curiously
compelling, reminiscent of perhaps a leopard seal’s
fur or evidence of some strange and terrible ordeal
by fire.
From the hybrid history of surfboard design, Peter
has combined his design and furniture making skills
and a passionate scholarship of surfing history in a
stylish homage to the surfboard and the rich culture
that surrounds it. He has taken an object, that to
the uninstructed might seem commonplace, and
honoured its past and celebrated the pleasure it
brings people. Equally, for Peter this beautiful series
of snapshots of surfboard history are a near perfect
combination of his occupational skills and his
recreational and cultural interests. He’s a lucky man
for having found that place.
Mark Thomson
Institute of Backyard Studies
From left: Paisley, 2010, 6’11”, Paulownia, artwork by Quentin Gore; One True Religion, 2008, 9’6”, Paulownia, Western Red Cedar; Gun, 2008, 8’, Tasmanian Blackwood, Paulownia
It is often observed that most modern Australians choose to live on the very rim of their country, on the
collision point between two vast elements: the sea and the land. When a wave or swell approaches the
land and meets shallow water, the wave topples over in a striking display of fluid dynamics we know as
a breaking wave. The forces at play in this interaction are massively powerful and have long been a source
of human contemplation and pleasure. It is this power which is mercurially harnessed by the surfboard
rider to carve a fluid path across the face of a shifting wave for a few adrenalin-filled moments.
Firestick, 2010, 9’4”, Paulownia, fire
Right from top: Dec’s, 2007, 9’6”, Balsa, Western Red Cedar; Making Waves, 2007, 8’5”, Balsa, Jarrah, artwork by Stephen Bowers; Balloon, 2007, 8’, Paulownia, Jarrah
Fluid and solid