Why wood?

It’s an important question, that as a maker I continually ask myself, and also something that you as the client need to ask yourself. 200 years ago, wood was pretty much the only option for making furniture, which certainly is no longer the case.

Furniture can be made out of metals, plastics, composites and many other materials. It can be made in vast factories by robots who go 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, or people paid minimum wage (if that) who couldn’t care less what they are assembling.

For me personally, I love that wood is a natural material and part of our everyday lives. We need trees to survive, and once they come to the end of their natural life cycle, it is my pleasure to turn these trees into beautiful objects that will go on to live another hundred, two hundred, three hundred years.

It is the perfect example of recycling and reusing in my eyes. Plastics are fantastic for mass produced products and factory owners, but absolutely terrible for the environment. They have zero character and lack a human touch. Metals offer stability and strength, but also come at a huge environmental cost to produce, and are often too heavy to be of practical use for home sized furniture.There is an incredible pleasure that comes from working with wood that you cannot get from other materials.  You have to work together with the wood, not against it. Understand the pattern of the grain to know where best to cut it or hand plane it, what will work best as a table top, what is better suited to a table leg.

It is also an accessible product. You don’t need massive machinery to work it. Just a few hand tools can do. We have a long history of fine woodworking in this country and it is an honour to continue practicing techniques honed through centuries of hard work, sweating brows and sore hands.

Each piece of wood tells a story. You can tell if it grew straight as an arrow, if it weathered a storm and lost a branch, or even if it had been used as a scratching post by an animal. And of course once the piece is finished, it is a wonderful thing to touch the wood, to feel its texture, or its smoothness, and watch the sunlight show off the myriad of colours and patterns in the wood. Unless kept outside, wood will outlive all of us, and be enjoyed by many generations of your family. I could go on for hours but i'll leave it there for now. If you think you would like some beautiful wood in your life then please get in touch.

Gareth