On May 12th Ridley Scott’s epic Robin Hood opens Cannes film festival and it opens in UK cinemas on the 14th. Why write about this on a crafts blog? Well having spent a bit of time on set last year I know there was a huge amount of wonderful craftwork commissioned for the film. Ridley Scott is known for the detail of his sets and now I can see why.
I made lots of wooden bowls varying from simple humble drinking bowls and dishes to high status silver rimmed mazers. I sent this set last February see blog
Then when they started filming apparantly Ridley Scott liked them so much he wanted a load more so in April I sent these.
In July I got to visit the set and set up a bowlturners workshop with my old lathe, piles of shavings from my workshop floor and a set of tools I forged for the set.
I had imagined a set would look very fake or at best it would look OK from a distance and that when you walked round the back of a building it would all be plywood and screws. In fact it was more like walking round an ethnographic museum. There was lots of wonderful craftwork, baskets, coracles, rushwork, I heard the ropeworks at Chatham made “an awful lot of rope”
This is a blog post from my set visit with links to some of the makers I knew about.
There is plenty in the press at the moment, this Telegraph article suggests that Robin Hood is a corruption of “Robin in the Wood” which gave me a giggle. I hope it will be a good film but I know the set in the background will be worth looking at.
Gosh, that looks really exciting..well done you for all that work…look forward to seeing the film..