Today a magazine dropped through my letterbox, no ordinary magazine, it was a super glossy all the way from Taiwan and as you can see the theme of the issue was Hadicraft, Art, Heritage. It is a luxury publication in every way, heavy paper, gorgeous images, good design, lots of space. The articles are on the major luxury brands…
OK this post is for my friends the geek spooncarvers of the world, there are not many of us and this post will be of no interest to anyone else so apologies for that, for those of us in the know it has a lot of meaning. Wille sundqvist is the grand old man of the spooncarving world. His book…
At Taljfest all the top woodworkers from Scandinavia were gathered and for me there was one that stood out. The woodwork of Anja Sundberg is a complete breath of fresh air. Have a look at the pics and you’ll see great simple ideas but all executed with an eye for detail which just brings everything to life. How could any…
This festival was a packed 3 days and there was so much to see. These pics are just a few of my favourite things. This is Beth Moen bowlcarver, main teacher on the woodworking course at Saterglantan and with Jogge Sundqvist organiser of Taljfest. Her bowls are great. now here we have three grand masters of Swedish sloyd. Knut Östgård,…
Well where do I start with this one? I just processed and sorted images from Tajfest the carving festival I taught at in August at the national folk craft school in Sweden. The next couple of blog posts will be mostly images of the things i found inspirational. Much of the focus of the event was on lectures, I gave…
I love axes, I love to see them forged and I love the sort of ingenious technology that people came up with in the late nineteenth early twentieth century. It feels to me there was a sweet spot in technology that involved a lot of skill in the maker before full mechanisation removed most of the skill. I have never…
i We took our Bronze age boat to Faversham to use the slipway at Alan Stayley’s boatyard. Boatyards are very photogenic places so here are a bunch of random pics. I love the mug above, if you are a boatbuilder, when you handle breaks off your much you stick back together with boat epoxy. We covered our boat in hessian…
Folk who followed my bronze age boatbuilding last year may enjoy this update. We built the boat as the centrepiece of a traveling Bronze Age exhibition. The boat has now spent 6 months in France, 6 months in Belgium and come home. Now it was time to take it apart, put it back together whilst undertaking genuine experimental archaeology to…
Last night and this morning I have been writing an essay on my response to an art exhibition titled “Robin Wood’s Cores Recycled”, it was quite an enjoyable if slightly self indulgent experience. The exhibition is a collection of pieces by some of the best wood artists in the world and as a starting point they were all given one…
This delightful little book was published last week. For those that don’t know craftivism is a mixture of craft and activism. Craftivists get together and do stuff to raise awareness about issues and attempt to change the world for the better. The link between craft and campaigning for a better world is long perhaps Gandhi (a keen hand spinner) and…
