Last year I made a lovely set of bowls and mazers for Ridley Scott’s medieval film “Nottingham” then at the last minute it was canceled due to the pending actors strike. I just heard that it is up and running again and starts filming in 5 weeks. Russel Crowe is Robin Hood and Cate Blanchett has just been confirmed as…
Most of the trees I use come from a tree surgeon who does a lot of management on Sheffield’s street trees. Even large old trees can not be sold to the sawmills because of the risk of nails and things inside. This can mess up an expensive sawmill but I cut them up with a chainsaw and if I hit…
We had a most enjoyable weekend. Our spooncarving group were just a great fun bunch of people and we all had a fun time. We all went through the various processes of learning to use an axe and knife safely but efficiently and then how to get the best designs out of various bits of wood. Nicola cooks home made…
Tomorrow is the first day of our first spooncarving course of the year. We are fully booked again which is nice and I am looking forward to meeting 8 new folks and sharing time carving together. Yesterday I sharpened 8 knives, 8 axes and 8 hook knives. I spent today collecting wood, first a trip to meet with a past…
Lost Crafts by Una McGovern has been a surprisingly good read. The book covers around 100 crafts with about 3 pages each. I expected it to be superficial and poorly written, the sort of thing you get in the local paper. In fact each craft gets a very accurate and concise summary with interesting anecdotes. The range chosen is interesting…
I live where I do because I have a deep connection with the natural landscape and being in beautiful places is very important to me. I never take the scenery for granted and in fact when you live in a hilly place everyday the light changes the view and highlights things you have never noticed before. Yesterdy was even more…
So I have been talking with Mathew about spoon racks and thought I would put a few pictures of different types up here. These date from the days when everyone had their own personal wooden spoon which they washed and popped back in the rack. First a joined one, these are quite common in the antiques trade and most come…
Last year I came across a chap in Sweden Fredde Norgren who has wonderful bushcraft skills. He has lots of videos on his youtube site and if you are into the outdoors and simple (but very proficient) hand skills I would recomend looking through them. Fredde and I have aranged a 3 day course in the UK so we can…
I was just contacted by a chap in the US who does some spooncarving and chairmaking. He was taken with some pictures of a spoon rack on our website and wanted better pictures to show how it was made. So I thought I would put them here and a link to his site too. His name is Matthew Comer and…
France has a wonderful system for supporting traditional crafts. “These craftsmen, second to none, whose talents are often anonymousand unsung, deserve to be better known, declared the Minister ofCulture and Communication,… For although the heritage is recognisedprimarily in the form of historic monuments, she explained, …ourcountry also has a great many highly skilled craftsmen and women,whose expertise is in itself…
