Sawdust - Carpenter Documentary Film Directed by Michael Firus. Produced by Visia Studios

A mainstay of countless exhibitions and publications, the work of Bryan Cush of Sawdust Bureau sits at the forefront of premium architectural carpentry. Not only is Bryan’s work at the pinnacle of the field, but it’s also environmentally conscious, utilising the unique character local salvage and sustainable grown timbers. Documentary by Visia Studios. For distribution inquiries visit our website: www.visiastudios.com/
My website: michaelfirus.com/
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- Feels, more like craft to me, rather than necessarily big-box furniture. You know you're talking about details that are a couple of millimeters, as opposed to just one big statement. They're quite subtle. So it'd be sort of more like that of a jewelry maker. My name is Bryan Cush, I'm a furniture-maker from Melbourne and my company is Sawdust Bureau. We'll try to create architectural details within our furniture, so it's not just old school woodworking. You know this looks like a really polished product that could be in a high-end home or commercial selling. So today we're gonna do one of our stormup tables, which is a piece of recycled ironbark, which we've already jointed and filled all the veins. and we take a stormup template and then use the plunge writer to put in different stock sizes of brass. I started Sawdust Bureau about four years ago, and just as an outlet for creativity. I got a small workshop. I got a few tools together, and then a few commissions started to happen where I kind of ended up with a bit of pressure on my full-time job, which is an architect and partitioned slowly out of office work and into working a workshop. One of the things that we think sets us aside a bit from other local base makers is that we restrict ourselves to work entirely with Australian timbers, probably about 50% salvage. So from old demolition yards, within factories, floor joists. We've had a fence posts from the MCG, we've had bridge scaffolding from the Sydney Harbor Bridge when they re-painted it in the 70s. So stuff that has a bit of story. But the thing of primary importance to us is that it is Australian. We kind of see our role as being a bit of an educator as well for people in architecture and interior design, that Australian timbers are you know at least as good if not superior to most imported timbers. And it's just one of those things that makes us a niche business, but it's important to us. Sustainable wise, like it just does not make sense bringing timbers from America or South America, shipping them halfway around the world when we have unbelievable and responsibly managed forests in Australia, and so much salvage timber. Like you look at all the demolition work that's gone on in Sydney and Melbourne in the last 20 years, all that timber has to end up somewhere. So why should it end up in landfill? Like why can't you make world-class furniture out of it? We were originally based in Kensington in the Younghusband wool stores. But then an opportunity came up to move to Jack's Magazine in Melbourne and we assumed it was more magazine printing press or something. Despite living down the road, we didn't really know what it was. And we came to do the tour and it turns out that it's a magazine for ammunition. So it's an 1870s storage facility for shells and high explosives and the second we saw we absolutely fell in love with it. Completely different space to what we had before. Now we have light air, we've got an incredible view down the loading dock canal. We've got a train line that we maintained rather than just covering it up. We thought it was cool to have some of the heritage of the building still in our workshop. This trolley is over 100 years old and still works absolutely perfectly, so we've added a bit on the top and made it into a mobile workbench. I like bits of timber with really deep veins and pockets, and nails holes and things that actually tell a bit of the story, that this is a real piece of timber and it's come from somewhere. I'll get stuff that other makers won't want like ironbark timber because it's so hard to work. It's one of the hardest timbers in the world. Nowadays, most people prefer blondes or brown timbers and if they ask for an American Walnut, we'll say, "Well, that's great but you can have this spotted gum. "It's even better and it's come "from a couple of hundred kilometers away." You know you get all these architects that harp on about sustainability, and that's one of the easiest things you can do is source a local product.