How I came to be a spoonsmith is probably a story worth telling; it starts with an adverse reaction to boredom and quickly moves onto the jungles of Uganda via a brief spell in an English woodland with a friendly master craftsman. Read on...
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Having absolutely nothing to do can sometimes be the best way to live a busy old life. In my case it was 1997, I was in a small English village called Claverham; I was jobless, cold and bored. On that particular day I went exploring the best way any penniless person can do, and that is to wander through the well-stocked shelves at the nearest bookstore with half decent heating.
I liked to play around with wood so I came to a halt at the handyman section. I remember it as clear as day, standing there in a coat that looked like a full grizzly bear skin, hair messed up like I had just wrestled with the bear, and now feeling overly warm under the shop’s ‘stop-a-while-and-read’ mood lighting. My eyes fell upon a book that stood out from the usual build something horrible and dangerous in a weekend titles; it was called Green Woodwork: working with wood the natural way by a fine bearded chap, Mike Abbott, featured on the cover treadling what appeared to be a homemade, foot-powered woodturning lathe. I was interested, and after a few pages I was hooked. I even bought the thing.
Fast forward six months and I’m in Mike Abbott’s blissful woodland workshop, left leg going like the clappers on one of his lathes and learning a craft that I knew would consume me. I was half way through a ten day chair making course, learning how to craft a ladderback chair from a single log of straight grained English Ash. Power tools in this workshop were nowhere to be seen or heard, leaving the senses to feel and work with the grain and appreciate the sounds of Clissett Wood from where the ash tree came.
Evenings were spent in Mike’s outdoor kitchen where stout aplenty was consumed to keep the toes warm and giant basketball sized puffball mushrooms were sliced into ‘steaks’ and fried in a wok over a fire powered by wood shavings. Clissett Wood was invisible in the dark, but occasional reminders from owls or scurrying animals kept it in my thoughts. I was starting to see that working with wood the natural way meant more than just working with unseasoned, soft hearted timbers, it was a nod to the forest, an appreciation of using your hands to craft living trees into functional forms that still have an essence of life in their design.
I went home with a chair and a mind awash with inspiration and before long I had opened Goblin Combe Rustics, a little one man band of furniture making and foot powered lathe demonstrations that I took with me across South West England.
The joy of working wood this way hung around like a good friend, even when it soon became apparent that public fascination in the craft wasn’t strong enough for people to turn their backs on the prolific moulded white plastic patio chairs of the 90s. I needed work before I started wandering aimlessly around bookstores again, so naturally I ploughed myself into possibly the lowest form of pay I could train for. And so started the animal years.
It was the year 2000, I was still in Claverham and a student of animal welfare paying my way with local pizza deliveries; yes it was raining and yes I was cold. I was motionless in front of the TV when the phone interrupted my viewing. It was for me. A long forgotten application to work with apes somewhere warmer than Claverham had fruited into a job offer counting wild chimp populations in Uganda for eight months!
Advance a month and I’m stood once again in beautiful forest, my thoughts being drawn as they were in Clissett Wood into this tangled mess of wonder. This was Budongo. Over the next four months I would live in this enormous forest and with a merry band of locals we would cover every square kilometre on foot, searching for wild chimps, monkey species and illegal logging. For the second time in my life a forest activity would consume me and stay with me indefinitely.
Budongo was wild and dangerous, and in between living for a month with an orphaned three-year-old chimp (that’s another story) I would unexpectedly fall in love with an Australian primatologist researching chimp behaviour in a secluded forest field station. I followed her back to her home on the beautiful Sapphire Coast of New South Wales where surrounded again by sprawling bush (minus chimps, lions and baboons) I would rekindle my love of working with wood.
Before long a foot powered lathe was set up in the shed, I started demonstrating forgotten crafts at last year’s Eden Whale Festival and people started signing up for a natural woodworking course held earlier this year in Bemboka. We had a hoot, we made a full size pitsaw, a little basket, the beginnings of a storytelling throne and stories aplenty were shared around the campfire. This was a lot of fun, the kind of fun that spreads easily to others, and so without much thought, Spoonsmith was born, a kind of paddock-to-plate woodsmithery that gives your home grown tucker a handmade place on the table. We’ve got another Bemboka weekend workshop on the way in November and people wanting to try their hand at spoon carving can have a go at this year’s Eden Whale Festival.
It’s been a meandering path so far and all because I was stuck for something to do back in ’97. Embrace boredom everyone, it opens so many doors. Get in touch through www.spoonsmith.com.au if you’d like to learn more about or carving a spoon, or path, of your own.