I watched the movie last night and was probably the only member of the audience to be rather disappointed not to see more wooden bowls. My big 18″ diameter wooden bowls featured well including one shot where Cate Blanchett as Marian was washing her feet in one but the many smaller bowls didn’t show up much. I guess in the…
Is craft environmental friendly? There have been a spate of “craft and environmentalism” conferences recently, I haven’t attended any, the last one was in Plymouth so the choice was a day each way on the train or an hour in a plane, many folk flew. I have had a very long standing interest in environmentalism and came to craft through…
Just a few more photos showing progress on my new bridge. It looks over-engineered for the tiny stream but 6 weeks ago the water would have been lapping just under the main timbers. Cutting the last handrails. If you look closely bottom centre you’ll see a newly hatched family of mallards. View across the cricket field. It’s all coming together…
Gränsfors Bruks are a small company who forge rather nice axes in Sweden. They started forging axes in 1902 but the advent of chainsaws and the move to mass produced drop forged axes meant that the company was strugging by the 1980’s. In 1989 they took the bold move of choosing to market themselves on their traditional workmanship. Where all…
I hope regular readers are not put off by the new blog layout. I am not very technically minded which is why blogging software works well for me, it is so easy to use. Having said that I look at friends who blog with wordpress or typepad which seem to integrate much more easily to produce a whole website. This…
Carving wooden bowls is a wonderful thing to do. It is a bit harder physically than spooncarving and requires a few more dedicated tools but the results are wonderful. Here are a couple of bowls carved by students on our first bowlcarving course. I have been carving bowls for some time and before starting to teach I tried out all…
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…
Regular readers of this blog will have seen Mike Turnock’s workshop before and read about how he is the last sieve and riddle maker in the UK, steam bending wooden rims and weaving wire mesh sieves for gardeners, shellfish fishermen, cooks and potters. The Heritage Craft Association have done much to help publicise Mike’s work both nationally which has helped…
Having cut the main timbers for the bridge I needed to move them over a wall and to the worksite. It was a fun days work and a friend and neighbour Mark Wallington came to help. Mark is a scriptwriter and author so I think it was a bit of a change for him but a gorgeous day which we…
I have had little time for blogging recently but have been making good progress on my green oak bridge at Bradfield. This post showed the start of the work on the stone abutments. The next step was finding a suitable tree for the main timbers. I have been looking for this tree for many months. It needed to be and…
