My friends Michail and Hannes visited last week, we visited Owen Jones in the Lakes and the Carpenters Fellowship Frame event where we were all demonstrating hand tool woodworking. It was school holidays so Ollie came with us. Lots of good times. This is Owen working on a basket. He lives on the banks of Coniston and let us take…
Today I finished a commemorative oak gate installed at Epwell near Banbury. It has been a long project involving several craftspeople, a woodcarver, a blacksmith and my mate Andy who did the joinery on the gate. I was delighted with the finished project as was Alice who commissioned it. This is what it replaced, functional but rather an urban solution…
Just wanted to share a couple of snaps taken out of my back garden last week. I love the way the landscape changes as the light moves across the hills spotlighting different areas. These two shots show features spanning 2500 years of human activity. Looking south we see Mam Tor or mother hill an iron age hill fort. The paralel…
Yesterday was a day of meetings in London, Queen Elizabeth Scholarship Trust were very supportive of the work we are doing with the Heritage Crafts Association, the advisor on heritage issues at DCMS had some useful leads and the highlight of the day was meeting Mark Jones director of the V&A who as well as being an advocate of modern…
I always wanted to find a job which combined working with body mind and soul, this week has got a pretty good balance. Yesterday I cut up part of a big beech tree, this is my raw material for making plates. Much of the day I was working in the rain which made me appreciate the afternoon sun all the…
Last craftsperson from Lincre woodland festival this is Ben Willis. He was an apprentice with Mike Abbott 3 years ago and is a very competent pole lathe turner. He is also a freelance journalist and has written for I think he said the Telegraph and Guardian on environmental issues. At Linacre he was turning rounders bats out of the gorgeous…
Another fine craftsman at Linacre was John Richardson chairmaker. He makes fine ladderback chairs in the arts and crafts tradition. John lives on a narrowboat in Leicestershire and has a second boat as a workshop, this keeps his overheads low and his chairs are very reasonable though he is really semi retired now and does not make so many. I…
Last weekend I was turning at Linacre woodland festival near Chesterfield. It is a lovely small local event in nice woodland alongside the reservoir. There are some excellent craftspeople demonstrating and we stay on site and have a nice evening round the camp fire….sometimes work can be very pleasurable indeed. It is a family friendly event with story telling for…
I first heard about Patterson’s many years ago whilst I was still working for the National Trust as a forester. It was an unusual property for the Trust to take on because it was relatively modern industrial heritage. On Tuesday I finally got to visit. I was in Northern Ireland partly to work on the forthcoming National Occupational Standards for…
Nice article out today in the September issue of Craft and Design magazine. The editor Angie Boyer has been very supportive of the Heritage Crafts Association and following this article we hope to run a series on traditional craftspeople with one featured each issue, so if you know of someone doing a traditional craft that could do with a bit…
