I spent Friday collecting a large beech tree. This is an exciting time, I am very careful selecting wood that I hope will turn well, the right wood is a joy to use and makes great bowls. You never know from the outside of a tree how it will be to work. I am often asked which wood is may…
Let’s start with a definition for those that don’t know. From the urban dictionary Artwank is; “Any visual or audio media which is made impenetrable on purpose, simply to gain critical acclaim from those who think that such impenetrability automatically implies hidden genius.Such work is almost always incredibly shallow and without thought, as can be gauged from a quick analysis by…
I love the web, it’s a great source of inspiration. At the moment I am interested in marketing and in particular how we can convey the very real messages of tangible, authentic, meaningful products through an ephemeral digital medium. Some folk are doing it really well and in an increasingly digital age there seems to be a real thirst for things that…
Professor Trevor Marchand is fast becoming a hero of mine. Why? because he understands what he calls “the remarkable skilled knowledge of craftspeople” Now I posted a film of this guy a few days ago but this one is better, it gets better the further you get into it and the questions from 30 mins onwards are great too. Lots of…
These are my work clogs. They are about 10 years old and going strong, the thick supple leather is like saddle leather and the stitching unbustable. The wooden soles are great so long as you keep something underneath them. I am not good at the stitch in time saves nine stuff and wore through the treads and have been walking…
Last September I was invited to speak on craft at the V&A for the Queen Elizabeth Scholarship TrustThe transcripts have just been put up online as a PDF here Or if you would prefer to read as plain text without pictures I’ll copy my bit below. Art, Craft, and Design:Cross-overs and Boundariesin the 21st CenturyIntroductory StatementGlenn Adamson: Good morning, everyone.…
Last night I slept in a snowdrift, I loved it. It was a bit of a contrast to the rest of the day the Heritage Crafts Association held our annual conference at the V&A in London. There was me in my best suit and Jeremy West shoes on the podium, after a long but inspiring day I took the train…
I believe that music, dance and creativity should all be part of everyday life, not just as a passive audience but something you do. In some ways I feel recording whilst it has given us all easy access to great music has maybe cut the link from live performance and just doing it. The internet seems to be breaking down…
This is one of the reasons why I work. Robin, I got a couple of quaichs from you a while a ago. One of them was used in our wedding last August and we had it engraved. Last night we used both in our annual (this was our fourth) Burns’ supper. I’ve included a few photos that I…
Most of my blog posts are about traditional woodworking and traditional crafts but I am also passionately interested in traditional agriculture globally and locally. Perhaps surprisingly only 30% of the worlds food is produced by the industrialised farming methods we are so familiar with in the developed West, this system is designed to work with large acreages of land under monoculture,…
