When my customers buy work from me it generally arrives in a fairly shoddy looking cardboard box which I collected from the supermarket and reused. I am aware that this does not give the feeling of value and quality that I feel for my work. I know how wonderful it feels opening beautiful, well designed packaging, the Apple company has to be some of the most beautiful. The problem is I also know that however nice the packaging is and however much business sense it makes to present my work well I feel that the world is gradually being buried in a mountain of discarded packaging.
A friend locally runs Eco Eco a lovely little shop selling goods sourced with the environment in mind and we were talking over this problem recently. She sources boxes that are cast offs from larger packaging companies and asked if I could supply shavings to use instead of bubble wrap. So I am currently drying piles of shavings, then we will sieve them using one of Mike Turnock’s lovely sieves and see how it works. The baskets are Owen Jones swills.
Hi Robin,good to see you have found an outlet for what must be quite a lot of shavings you produce. I also use one of his sieves to riddle my shavings before I bag and sell them for firelighting and animal bedding. Local friends get to come and bag their own in exchange for free range eggs, which suits me and the kids love grabbing the shavings from under the lathe. Great blog – keep up the good work, it is an inspiration,cheersMark