What a wonderful vehicle for learning and reflection the Classic Rendezvous site is! I often wonder what I did with my limited spare time before I discovered the site. Late last night into early morning I spent a few hours revisiting the Cirque 2005 pictures and then browsing through many of the sections on individual American framebuilders, and my conclusion is that the States really must have the largest pool of artist craftsman frame-..builders of any country in then world. The diversity and quality is astounding.
Today, leafing through the email contributions I was delighted to find at No6 Garth's "Nothing Feels Quite LIke.." and close-by at No 26 Doug's "Can a Better KOF frame be built?" - both very thought provoking contributions but both in a sense touching upon similar themes of superlatives and comparatives in relation to bike frames..the first more concerned with the ride and performance, and the second more with, but not exclusively so, looks and price, although Garth's Colnago Arabesque was neither the cheapest nor the least embellished frame in the shop at the time of purchase.
All this came at a time when I have just started working on two of the collection of bikes that I have literally amassed over the past thirty years or so... the first the Sauvage-Lejeune that carried Henri Anglade to 4th place in the 1965 Tour de France and to his second Champion of France jersey, in the same year, and the second bike is the 1935 Reyhand that I bought as a barn-find in France last year.
Both are built very strictly in the "Form Follows Function" school of frame-building. However while I doubt whether Bernard Carre who built the Sauvage-Lejeune ever dressed over the lugs before brazing, and I am fairly positive that he didn't pass a file over any part of the frame after brazing, I am certain that Paul Reiss (Reyhand) spent long hours on filing and polishing every welded joint on the '35 randonneur.
So..I have further concluded that Doug, in his second contri, when he wrote "..I don't see an inconsistency between being practical and wanting beauty" had a valid point.
However, beauty as we all know "...is in the eye of the beholder" and the beauty of the Reyhand lies not in gratuitous embellishment, or multi-colour paint jobs, but in its minimalist smooth sleek lines and the one-colour deep brown paint that enhances the functional purposeful look of the frame, rather then destracting and distracting.
I do not in any way detract from the incredible skill of the cutters of elaborate lugs and frame adornements - I have cut my fair share of the years - but I would never seek to build a "better" bike - itself a very personal value judgement - simply by adding on embellishments that did nothing but embellish.
Perhaps I came from the school of "less is better" and in that respect I consider that there is no frame on the CR site that better sums up my own personal design philosophy than those on the Philbrook site, where the simple single colour spray job enhances the sleek purposeful lines of the time-trial frame to perfection. He is certainly my type of builder.
In 1993 I had the good fortune to meet up with Sean Kelly, the Irish roadman, and to spend half and hour or so just talking about frames. When finally asked what he considered to be the best frame he had ever ridden..and obviously thinking in terms of performance..he quite unreservedly said, in his rich Irish brogue "It would have to be the TVT!..Not a doubt about it!"
Thankfully for the purposes of this contribution the highly successful stark-looking TVT carbon-tubed alloy-lugged frames were first produced in 1981 but under the name of TCT. Fortunately I became the UK importer, sold a whole load of them and still ride one as "my best bike". As Garth said of his Colnago Arabesque..and I would use his terms to describe my TVT "...nothing feeels quite like it." As a French magazine wrote when reviewing the TVT " this frame has apparently contradictory qualities, being both rigid and supple at the same time"
TVT - just call it timeless functional elegance.
Norris Lockley, Settle Uk