Robin Wood

For a long time it has been possible to buy clothing cheap and not know the true costs, by that I mean the thousands of Indian cotton farmers that have committed suicide in the last ten years or the thousand killed in the horrific Bangladesh factory collapse. Well there are alternatives. Today my new jeans arrived in the post and they were made in Wales. If you are a craftsperson you should look long and hard at these jeans and think about how you would feel opening this package and then think how you send your own work out.




I loved them before I put them on, actually when I put them on at first I wasn't sure because they are very stiff, like jeans used to be, very tough, hard wearing and made to last. I am sure most folk would be horrified at the price but it is possible to pay more for naff designer label jeans. My last jeans were made by howies from tough thick organic cotton. They lasted 5 years. If these jeans do the same and I am sure they will they will cost less than £25 a year so they are good value. Why not treat yourself and wear your clothing with an easy conscience. see the story here http://hiutdenim.co.uk/ 

I can't wait for my boots to be ready they will go so well with my new jeans.

This is a friend Sharif who has been on several courses with me over the last few years. He has become a very good green wood worker and he clearly has a friend who is good at the filming and editing. I love the noddy head spoon dance with pounding beat.



You can see more of Sharif's work on his blog here  

This is a nice one of the Chiltern chairmaking industry



And this one feels even more dated I grew up watching this stuff, the Generation game from 1974, with my mate Stuart King doing chairmaking unbelievable that Bruce Forsythe is still presenting today.

Professor Trevor Marchand is fast becoming a hero of mine. Why? because he understands what he calls "the remarkable skilled knowledge of craftspeople" Now I posted a film of this guy a few days ago but this one is better, it gets better the further you get into it and the questions from 30 mins onwards are great too.

Lots of folk understand handwork and there are a few academics who study it and write about it but I think Trevor is perhaps unique in his depth of understanding of both worlds. This is great as it stretches my thoughts about what I do in the workshop and it also gives those of us who work with our hands more credibility. I know that there are not many dim craftspeople but the level of intelligence that is required to be really good is not often understood from the outside.



Incidentally the title of the blog post is a tribute to Doug Stowe who blogs prolifically on the value of handwork  and I am sure will love the film.

I need help with my website, can you help or would you recommend someone?
I have a budget for the job but would love to find someone who has the skills I need and is also interested in craft (though that's not essential)
I have a website, a bunch of gallery pages on a blog site and this blog and need to pull them together in a more cohesive package that is easier for folk to find their way around, and more to the point find their way to the gallery to buy bowls. I have prepared a brief giving details of what I am after and would be happy to share and discuss it with anyone who would be interested in quoting for the job.

I need someone who can help set up a clean simple template and import the content from the various sites. I can edit so long as it is simple. I am thinking probably wordpress is the way to go. I also need the back end to be sorted with all the links redirecting so that folk with links to pages don't loose them.

These are a few of the sites I like

http://www.billambergstudio.com/
http://www.handfulofsalt.com/
http://hiutdenim.co.uk/

So if you are still reading maybe you have web design skills and like my work? I am happy to pay in money bowls or both let's talk. send me an email robin@robin-wood.co.uk

I spend a lot of time posting about my woodworking and other fun stuff here and often forget to update the most important bit of my various online sites, the gallery pages where people can buy my work. In fact most fo the pages have been showing "currently out of stock" for ages. I do have some nice bowls now ready for new homes and have just uploaded a bunch of photos. I'll put a few up here as a taster and if you'd like to see more pop over to the gallery page.

My mate Barn Carder carves spoons. The BBC just made a lovely little video of his work and his London spoon shop.

You'll have to visit the BBC site to see it, I hope it works outside the UK too here is the link

This 10 minute film was made to celebrate the craft skills awards, it includes film from the finalists workshops with their insights into why they do what they do and what it means to work in craft. The awards judges (I was one) also add their thoughts, I think all together it gives a good overview of what it means to work in craft. I love the comment from Cowley's "There are more astronauts walking about that parchment makers."

I heard Trevor Marchant give this talk at a conference last year and it is fantastic in that it shows a serious academic with a genuine understanding and reverence for the skills involved in traditional crafts and how they are passed on from generation to generation in traditional cultures. I am delighted to discover that Trevor has been elevated to the position of professor and his inaugural lecture is now online. If you want to skip the intro his talk starts at 15 mins in. It is longer than most stuff I post here but I think his work is very important for traditional craftspeople. It's a shame you can't see the fantastic pictures of buildings that accompany the talk but the words are worth listening to.

These are my work clogs. They are about 10 years old and going strong, the thick supple leather is like saddle leather and the stitching unbustable. The wooden soles are great so long as you keep something underneath them. I am not good at the stitch in time saves nine stuff and wore through the treads and have been walking on the wood for some time. You can see how much I wore the heals down but as of this weekend I now have composite clogs with new oak heals. I made the treads from old conveyor belt I have been using this stuff for several years for my pole lathe drive strap and it seems to be pretty well indestructible so I'll see how it lasts underfoot.

 everyone made two bowls, the first is a standard design just to get to grips with the tools and techniques.
Once that is done we start again with a larger piece of wood and carve a second bowl with everyone choosing different pieces and making different shaped bowls. This is my daughter Jojo who wanted to make a duck bowl, mine is copied from one I saw years ago at Saterglantan the national folk craft school in Sweden.
 Martin made an alder bowl, it is a nice wood to work but often has hidden dead knots, Martin found one but it was solid wood and seemed to be OK, I really like the shape pf his bowl.

 After adzing we follow up with the gouge
 Once the inside is completely finished and smooth we take to the axe again, this is a realy good strong stance with the right leg back safe out of the way if the axe were to glance off and swing through and the wide stance gives lots of stability

 Michael makes traditional early instruments and was interested to learn more about the green woodworking techniques that would have been used to make instruments centuries ago.

 Jojo using the Hans Karlsson dog leg gouge, again a good wide stance with the weight of the body pushing the tool.

 The duck bowl hollowed out and the model alongside.
 carving the head with the axe.
 Pete making a lovely big dough trough.
Then on to fine finishing with the knife.

 and the finished bowls

With my Heritage Crafts Association hat on I helped organise 18 different craftspeople demonstrating over the 18 days of the Ideal Home Show in London. Here are some pictures.
Phil Gregson Wheelwright






Beth Tilston Scyther

a bunch more of Phil with my daughter Jojo helping out

I just posted these off tot heir new home St Fagans museum of Welsh Life. They are copies of iron age bowls found at the Glastonbury lake villages. I have been very very familiar with the drawings for many years but never made them up before and as is often the case the finished artefact is very very different in 3d than as a scale drawing. I have not realised just how big they were. 

Then to the clicking and closing room, here the leather is cut out using the best parts of the hide for the areas of high stress in the boot. These are actually bits for traditional leather cycling shoes for retro cyclists.

 Pat does the closing, that is stitching the various bits of the upper together, and she has been doing it here for over 50 years!
 It's a lovely old sewing machine, quietly and accurately stitching through two layers of really tough boot leather.
 lots of lasts
 downstairs now and these are tough workboots having the sole and upper united.
 workboot uppers
 These work boots are now ready to have rubber soles cast on to them. The rubber has a shelf life of 2 weeks and a big minimum order quantity so they have to build up a large stock then spend a week just doing rubber soles.
 This machine casts the sole.
 lasts
 Now on to leather soled boots, I ordered a pair of these. This amazing sewing machine is stitching through nearly 1/2 an inch of leather.


 This machine is fed with brass rood cut with a screw thread, it basically screws the leather sole and upper together more securely even than the famous good year welted sole. These are tough boots and will hold together even if they get worn down past the stitching.
 a bott with vibram sole, if you click to expand this image you may be able to see that as well as the heavy stitching there is that row just inside of brass screwws holding it all together.
 Hobnails! This pair of boots are in for repair, not what I would call a repair, basically all that is original is the uppers they have had complete new soles, lots of hand fitted hobnails and metal horseshoes front and back, they are not as good as new they are better than new because the uppers are already worn in to fit the user. I ordered horseshoes on mine but not the hobnails, they really are very noisy and pretty skiddy on a hard surface.
 Another pair of boots in for the re-soling treatment. I love that they do this, I give footwear a hard life and wear boots out, my new boots will be paying intermittent visits to the place they were made for many years to come.
 Here is my mate Andy choosing the leather for his boots, they don't normally offer this degree of customisation and having seen Andy dithering over all the potential options I can understand why.
 Here are a bunch of boots ready to go, I think these are maybe the "Tan waxy leather sole boot" I love that the Lennon's website quotes prices including vat and delivery and a pair of these tough stylish made in England boots costs just £150 delivered. They are apparently all the rage in Japan and with tweedy city folk, I am definitely a new fan.

 I should show you the outside fo the mill, a typical Derbyshire limestone mill building, Can you imagine what it feels like to be working making boots in the same building four generations of your family have worked in? I love to see small scale manufacturing going on within local communities like this it just feels healthy and right somehow. Andy bought the mens traditional Derby boot 

 I cut the tree up and then turned a nest of bowls.
 Rob with his bowls.
 Ash was the most commonly chosen timber for bowls during medieval times, I don't use it so much today but these bowls turned out nice so maybe I should do it more. Here is a typical ash bowl from medieval London.

Folk may have read doom-laden reports in the press about ash die back disease and how all our ash trees are going to die.

The year is 1500 and a the BBC "Farm" team having done Victorian Farm, Edwardian Farm and Wartime Farm are setting out to live a year in the life of an early Tudor farm. For that they will need wooden bowls so yesterday, the first day of filming of their new series they visited the bowlturners workshop.

I have known Ruth Goodman for many years from doing demonstrations for The Mary Rose Trust, Shakespeare's Birthplace Trust and others. She and husband Mark run the Tudor Group  one of the best historical re enactment/interpretation societies. The crew were a great fun team too, I guess you have to be when you work such long hard hours together. On the day filming with me they had a 4 1/2 hour drive, 5 hours filming then 4 1/2 hours back home. Anyway here are some snaps of the day. The whole thing is made on a remarkably tight budget and what has made it a hit is the passion and dedication of the small team involved. In a world of reality TV programes and competitive game shows it is a breath of fresh air.

Last year this video did the rounds on the internet, you may have seen it before, if you haven't then you are in for a treat.


I absolutely loved it at the time and now I love it all the more and this is why. I just found the facebook page for Marquese Scott  and there are lots of similar vids, many of them low budget jobs from a couple of years ago but also a great interview with him which just says lots about how to get good at anything.

So what kept you dancing?

"Just the passion. Like the love for it that I felt when I was out there dancing. Like most people they would dance and if it doesn't pick up for them in like a couple of years they will loose interest because they are not gaining fruits from it you know, but I loved ir so much that I just stuck with it. It's like forget what everybody has to say you know you just got to follow your dreams and it's gonna happen one day you know"

So Marqueez do you have anything to say to future dancers right now? anyone who really looks up to you?

"I would have to say like I have been doing this for 18 years cos I was 12 years old, and it's not going to come overnight you have to stick with it. So what I would say to everybody is if you love it and its a passion, no matter what it is, it could be dance, it could be art. it could be music, whatever it is just stick with it and if you do it long enough and you get good at it success will come, you know what I am saying? so just stick with it....dedication, that's what I have to tell you guys."

here's the interview


and one more bit of dance


The message to me is do it for the passion, do it lots and keep doing it, do it for the love of doing it. That is the only thing that will keep you going for the years it takes to get really good at anything. Most people who get good at most things get little recognition or financial payback for it anyway so don't hope for or expect those things, if you genuinely love what you do that is reward enough.

So much else going on I rarely get the chance to post images of work here any more so here are a few pics of what I have been up to. This week I went to collect wood. There was a gorgeous looking beech log I have had my eye on for a while but when I cut it open it was not good inside so I rejected it. I came home with some fresh sycamore instead, it will be a while before this is ready to turn but it's always good to have good timber in stock.

This week I had a visit from HCA patron and chairman of Gieves and Hawkes Mark Henderson, his new venture is "The New Craftsmen" he is visiting and sourcing great british craftwork.


 My mission was to sell him on the idea that eating from woodware is a luxury experience. I always find it a hard sell if I only have the work with me, if I can sit people at a dinner table and feed them a meal from wood everyone is instantly convinced.


 Next up two mazers completed this week for commissions, both heading for the USA. Both are made from burr maple from Hatfield Forest. This first one I think is a stunner, sometimes a piece just works better than you could ever hope, I will be sad to part with it.




 Last up a special big bowl with a frill. I made a few of these about ten years ago and I don't know why I have not made them since, I like the design. It was originally inspired by medieval vessels I saw on a visit in 1998 from excavations at the Russian city of Novgorod though I have since seen more recent bowls with the frill from around the Baltic, particularly in Sweden. A big bowl like this takes about 2 months to dry and then will eventually find it's way on to my gallery pages.

Last year I did a piece for Paul Martin's Handmade Revolution. I did a blog post at the time with photos here but now there is a copy of the film on youtube, hope you enjoy it, we had a fun day.

Metalworking today but that is not really relevant, both films are really about what it means to be a maker of things.

The Metalsmith from Dan McComb on Vimeo.

The first film was shared with me by Ford Hallam who I first discovered a couple of years ago through seeing this next video online, his workmanship is outstanding. It's longer than most youtubes but stick with it I think you will find it worthwhile.



And this is the second part of Ford's film