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Traditional Woodworker Blog

 

Arts and Crafts and Shaker style furniture and Accessories. 

Furniture Uniquely Designed answering your needs.

hand cut dovetails and pegged tenonsHand Cut Dovetails and Pegged Tenons are a Signature Feature.

Hand made from locally grown timber, each piece is built in time-honoured tradition using mortise and tenon construction, dovetails are always hand cut. All surfaces are hand planed and burnished.

You will be pleased to know the small range of Home Accessories are also made to the same exacting standard. Particularly popular are my Elders Shaker Peg Rails. All Peg Rails are hand made and finished. They possibly represent the best quality Shaker Peg Rails available today.

 Timeless heirloom quality, generations of pleasure.

 

            Timber and technique and the Arts and Crafts Movement.

As well as being a truly beautiful, textured and sensuous material in its own right, timber is also one of the oldest traditional materials still in popular use. Additionally, it continues to be one of the most sustainable and environmentally friendly materials  available today.  This is something that is increasingly at the forefront of many peoples minds. So it’s good to know that trees have the facility to absorb carbon dioxide while growing and later have the ability to be almost endlessly recycled. Waste wood also heats my house and workshop. For all the gifts it bestows upon us, it is still a finite and vulnerable resource.

About a kilometre from my workshop

Therefore, its responsible use is an important part of our care for the planet. Exactly why the products you find here, are mostly made from locally grown timbers. Grown in sustainably managed forests, at a local level and just a few kilometres from my workshop. It’s comforting to know that these forests have been continually worked and managed for thousands of years, which still continues today.

Oak Just felled

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As far as is practical, all my woodworking techniques are with hand tools. This particularly applies to all surface preparation and to the forming of most joints like dovetails. Besides being desirable for any number of philosophical and ascetic reasons; this too makes a dramatic impact on the carbon footprint of the products you buy from me.

Avoiding the use of sandpaper wherever possible is definitely an ascetic choice. The gleam left on timber by the use of a well-tuned and sharpened hand plane gives birth to a future patina, a thing to be cherished. Sharp edge tools do not produce dust and clog the pores of the timber. This allows the surface to reflect and refract light and brings the surface alive. The surface not only throws off a warm glow with a character all its own, it beckons and demands to be caressed. By the way, most of the hand planes I use are also wooden. Many of these planes I have made myself, they glide effortlessly across the surface.

the founders of the arts and crafts movment stored their timber in exactly the same way as this
Oak Air Drying, typically this takes five years.
Scierie Minard

The woodworking process really begins at the wood yard, my role is to simply choose and arrange the timber. So that its hidden beauty reveals itself through design. The right choice at this point also plays a crucial part in ensuring that all your purchases are going to live long lives that can be passed down through the generations. It definitely helps that I live and work just six kilometres from Le Scierie Minard. Long operated by the same family with ownership passing from father to son.

Fabrice grading timber

Fabrice, the current Mr Minard, has over the years become a friend and is an endless source of knowledge on all phases of timber preparation; from its proper cutting and seasoning to its suitability for final use. His phenomenal memory and knowledge of the stock he carries saves hours of sorting to find exactly the right plank or pile that’s needed. It has to be said that Fabrice is also a highly skilled woodworker and timber framer in his own right.

 

I like to think that my lifestyle and approach to furniture making is a continuation of those ideas set forth by the founders of the Arts and Crafts movement and not simply the following of a certain style for the purpose of making money.

Father of Arts and Crafts
William Morris, leading figure and founding father of the Arts and Crafts movement
The arts and crafts group
The Gimsons and Barnsleys photographed at Sapperton, Gloucestershire, c. 1896 from left to right. Sidney Barnsley, Lucy Morley, Ernest Gimson, Alice with her husband Ernest Barnsley, and their daughters, Mary and Ethel.