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For as long as I can remember I have had a passion for making things, and it still delights me. I have no formal training in either woodwork or art and design. I make up things to make and I make up the ways to make them.
For a few years now I have been almost exclusively using birch ply because it suited the clean lines and curves I was obsessed with. When it is finely finished and you look closely, birch has plenty of colour and character – flecks of gold and silver and soft patterns of grain. In the birch ply pieces, though, the emphasis was on the design rather than the wood
More recently I have felt a need to use British hardwoods. I particularly like oak, it sits so firmly on the ground. I like using thick chunks of it matched to much more slender pieces. I also use fruitwoods and yew, mostly from small trees and branches – in other words, firewood. As long as the structural integrity isn’t compromised I use pieces with knot-holes, shakes, worm-holes (treated, of course) and bits of bark. I like the sense that these come from the growth of a tree. But what matters most is that what I make is pleasing to the senses, mostly to look at or touch.
The birch ply work is usually finished with acrylic lacquer, the oak and other hardwoods sealed with sanding sealer and waxed.
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