This week I sent out a set of 8 plates to a lovely customer who uses my plates on his boat. This is the email he sent me. “We bought a set of your plates 9 years ago for our sailing boat Alice we built and completed in 2000 ,they have been in use ever since and much admired, I…
This morning started with a radio interview at 7.15 on Radio Derby about the Ridley Scott commission and during the day I was packing up the bowls which are all ready to go now. I am pleased with them but they do look a bit drap since they wanted them untreated so that it will be easier for the props…
These two bowls are just off to a customer, a nice chap who has been collecting my work for a couple of years and has a taste for nice pieces. I did some photos of them for Goldsmiths magazine for an article they want to run and the laburnum photographs really well. Top one is a mazer and the bottom…
These days it is not enough to simply make nice things. In order to make a living craftsmen have to be businessmen too, in fact probably less than half my working time is spent actually making things, I spend a fair bit of time answering emails, packaging and posting work out, fetching wood, forging tools, doing the books etc. Today…
I have been forging my own woodturning tools for more than 15 years but for all that time I have borrowed other peoples forges which has its drawbacks. Today I took delivery of my very own new (to me) forge. It’s a gas powered forge similar to the ones farriers use and because it is small and well insulated will…
The swallows are happily feeding young now. It has been a busy couple of weeks with turning the big bowls for Ridley Scotts film Nottingham and then I needed to build a new lathe bed for my mobile lathe. The old one lasted about 12 years and the uprights or poppits as they are called are still OK. I made…
I have been busy in the workshop making bowls for Ridley Scott’s “Nottingham” film. Here are some of them stacked and drying, they are made from alder which was very commonly used in medieval times, it is white when you turn it then oxidises quite quickly to this orange colour. On Tuesday I went to London for the day to…
Its been a busy time so I have a few things to post. First is “project M.” I have been corresponding with my friend Tomio Imaru in Japan and he sent me some lovely Japanese bowls. I am always interested in how designs of bowls develop along with the food they are used for, Tomio told me the bowls are…
I just received an order to make some bowls for Ridley Scott’s next film which is set in the 12th century and called Nottingham. It has been billed as “The Galdiator version of Robin Hood”. I have been approached by folk looking for film props several times before but normally they want it tomorrow, have little money in the budget…
I have been working for a while with Sheffield silversmith Owen Waterhouse to make replicas of medieval mazer bowls and the Scottish whiskey drinking bowls called quaiches. It took us quite a while to work out how to do it but now Owen makes the rims then I turn bowls to fit. The difficult bit is getting a wooden bowl…
