Spoons from the Woods

Green Wood (Preview) from Elliott Forge on Vimeo.

Little video about Mike Abbott and the woodland he uses for his chair making courses, this is where I will be running my 6 day Spoon carving course 3-9th June, it is one of my favourite places on the planet and i am already getting excited about it! that woodland has changed many lives and that is down to Mike.

Mike has been running courses for years and his prices are stuck in the stone age! If I am fortunate enough to get up there in 2015 I will not be able to afford to run the course so cheaply. And I have told Mike he should be increasing his prices too, he will retire at some point! so get in while the going is good!

If you would like any more information about Spoons from the woods please get in contact.

What's that then?

Oh hi spoon nerds what's this i found amongst the detritus of my bedroom floor? possible explanations for how it was created and why please.

Part-Time Apprenticeship

I am looking for someone who wants to work in exchange for learning with the opportunity to have access to tools and materials on a regular basis. I am thinking particularly of Product design students but anyone can apply. You need to be passionate about form and function, you need to be able to commit to at least a couple of days a week for  6 months probably Friday/Saturday.

I tweet!

Too many posts get left unpublished! so i am moving towards publishing my words and pictures on twitter instead of here.

This will keep you up to date with what i am doing, thinking, and working on. For example "right now i am listening to Fleet foxes - Helplessness Blues...an album that almost feels as if it were written for me" or "Spoon greatness is always just a little dance away, maybe this time the spoon gods will bless me" if you wish to hear such drivel on a regular basis click on the link below and follow.

My twitter account is here and is what many of you are looking for. https://twitter.com/barnthespoon 

For those of you interested in my real work (Spoons) the best way to be involved is to visit my shop. It is hard to filter my customers, it isn't difficult to sell spoons, what i want is the best for my spoons that they will go to households where they'll be well used and loved. An increasing number of people come to the shop to meet me because they think I've got a cool story and aren't really interested in spoons, this immediately puts them in conflict with me as this is quite the opposite to how I feel...filter yourselves out now.

We are witnessing a remarkable "Wood Culture Renaissance" as an established worker within this field I forget quite how new this is to the wider public. It is my plan that at the vanguard of the Wood Culture Renaissance should be Axes and Knives brandishing hand carved wooden spoons with all their woodlore splendour. It is a fact that if you can do great work with an axe and knife you will have no problem working with the more modern tools such as planes, scrapers etc, cutting a dovetail is just primary school maths and moving a saw in a straight line! It is no coincidence that courters of yesteryear would carve spoons to impress their courted (i am still waiting for a woman to try her spoon on me!), i am now laying down the gauntlet if you can't make a good functioning spoon with an axe and knife in less than an hour you're not a woodworker!

I am a fan of positive competition, and have not kept secret one of my main aims in setting up Spoonfest with my good friend Robin Wood (we're at the start of the video below splitting the woood) was to greatly increase the knowledge base in my craft, I encourage competition because it drives me higher and without sounding too weird and pretentious i think the spoons deserve it, I got bored of having to look in museums to see woodwork that impressed me, now i really do believe the greatest woodworking cultures are ahead of us!






It really was an amazing summer and i am hugely grateful to those that made Spoonfest such a great success. It is a beautiful thing to have so many spoon lovers all in a field together. Thanks also to Jogge and Beth for inviting me over to Sweden for Taljfest it was awesome.

Favourite memories of summer:
In a late night spoon conversation confiding in fellow spoon nut that sometimes i stand my spoons up and pretend they're like little people pushing their proud chests forward, he replied that frequently he bathes with his spoons and has them dipping in and out of the water like dolphins.

On talking to one of my closest spoony friends i told him of my embarrassment at how crap the photos i took for my talk at Taljfest were, i was really worried having been asked to talk at such a prestigious craft centre in Sweden, he said that it would be fine and anyhow he was sick of going to great talks with their beautiful photos (i understand what he means).

Evening Classes/Day Workshops

Hi Folks had quite a few requests for Classes as Christmas gifts and I've finally got round to putting a new course date up for January, sorry for not replying to individual emails but this is now available for booking (Saturday January 18th 2014). I also have one place left on my Day workshop on Saturday 26th October.

Love wood shavings!

Right Sherlocks, what is this one? it's from a spoon but what tool? which part of what type of spoon?

Love Woodwork!

So to most of you that follow my blog who are already woodworkers these images will be instantly recognisable, perhaps you might drop a message in the comments box explaining what they are how they're made? I'd like to post some more obscure ones too, I almost like these bits of wood as much as the spoons they used to lay next to.

The original idea behind this post was to get rid of the waste material, the city farm 50 yards from my shop always used to take them but now have enough!

They make for great BBQ starting, mulch, pet bedding etc etc, if you'd like some please come along to the shop and see what we have, I hate to see it go to waste, and when I lived in the woods every last bit was put to good use.

HAPPY IDAHO DAY!

There are very few things I actually believe in but equality is one of them, we're all in it together peeps. Have a nice day x

SPOON HOLSTERS!

Well it's been a pretty busy week! last weekend was the Bodgers Ball which is the annual get together of the Pole lathe Association.  Bodgers used to knock out Windsor chair legs on Pole lathes with great skill and at high speed in the olden days. They always have a "log to leg" race at these get togethers, turning a beautiful pair of matching Windsor chair legs. A very competitive sport and much more entertaining than watching competing sawyers or pole climbers, it amazes me that no one has taken the idea and run with it. With the new craft revolution on the horizon it is a perfect time for someone like http://www.stewartlinford.com to turn these talented young bodgers into profit, and then the Pole lathe not just brought back from near extinction, would be alive and kicking thriving in a modern world that adores beautiful products handmade with skill. 

So you might have seen a nice little video made by John Galliver about my shop for the BBC News website, if you'd like to see it search barn the spoon bbc and it should come up with it, anyway a lot of people have got in contact which is great though i am notoriously bad at replying to emails : (

One of the best/funniest events that have come about because of the video was the arrival of a couple of spoon holsters in the post with a little note saying made these on a whim after seeing your video, if you want any for your shop please get in contact. I don't sell other stuff in my shop but it may well be something for Spoonfest, unfortunately i don't wear a belt but my Longest serving apprentice Owen Thomas is modelling them below. I think they are brilliant and the must have gift for all spoon lovers! If you want one get in contact with Roth via the link below.

http://www.hrothgarstibbon.co.uk/

Spoon on people!!

Revolving soup spoon from barn carder on Vimeo.

APPRENTICE!

Every now and then I get an urge to shout this out in the hope some Spoonlet will come scurrying along , usually when i'm getting cramp in my neck and need a shoulder rub or my knife needs sharpening and I don't want to get my hands dirty. It certainly would be nice to have some help around the place and someone who has to listen to me talk obsessively about spoons all the time.

You'd need to be someone who is planning on carving spoons professionally, someone who will work very hard at being a good carver, you need to have a love of trees and wood, you need to want to make useful spoons, you need to have a good awareness of what you think is beautiful. You should be able to hammer a nail without hitting your thumb every time, and good at drawing or neat handwriting will also help you.

I am looking for someone to come to me for a maximum of 3 days a week to work in exchange for learning, I will not be paying your national insurance etc but there will be perks. This role can be flexible for you as long as you can be flexible too.

Oh hi, Little spoon shop will be closed tomorrow (FRIDAY) as I am attending some cool crafty event with tech developers and a 3D printer (my nemesis), showing off the beauty of Axes and Knives. Not entirely sure how i got talked into this, as soon as someone mentions 3D i'm interested and it is just a couple of miles from my shop. I will be back as normal 10:00 am Saturday.

Spoons from the Wood

My 6 day residential course "Spoons from the Wood" is now fully booked, but please get in contact if you would like first refusal on the next course and I will email you as soon as I have the dates fixed (cost of this course is £420). (barnthespoon@hotmail.co.uk). 


The photo is dawn from the "veranda", on the edge of the wood where I will be running this course, and is a beautiful view of the Malverns. I can't wait to be back there again.

An Open Offer

I have just bought myself a laptop and a bicycle pretty much doubling my number of possessions. I now have no excuses for not replying to your emails!

I saw this poster at a tube station a few months back and it made me chuckle.

Obviously David has cottoned on to how cool spoons are, I tend not to be openly critical because it is more useful to speak positively for what you stand for...but David come on! this is my open invitation for a free carving lesson.

In my opinion you will never be able to create something out of wood that is more beautiful than the tree it came from. I think this is obvious, and therefore even when they are trying to make something beautiful an artist is not trying to "outdo" what was there before, but rather to highlight and impart a feeling or message unfortunately this can very quickly turn into messy beds and cut up cows.

You could argue an Artist has it easy as all he has to do is make something beautiful whereas a craftsman has to make something functional and beautiful. On the other hand if you don't like the way my spoons look at least they still function and are a real bargain at £15 not £15,00000.

I do appreciate some large sculptures but they are the opposite end of what I am passionate about. I am not slating Nash, he did some work with an axe before I was born- it wasn't done that well, but he did bring a public awareness to my favourite tool. And my first woodwork classes at the age of 6 were in a workshop with posters of his and other Similar sculptures of big wood. A lot of my woodwork in my early teens was emulating that kind of work, and is how I got into creating small sculptures that you can hold in your hand shaped with bandsaws, fretsaws, chisels belt sanders, if only someone had been able to show me then how to use an axe and knife, but back then even the experts didn't know what they were talking about.

If my work has a message it is that people exist as individuals and not just part of a group, that axes and knives are part of being human though somehow we have almost completely lost their use from everyday life.

I should ally myself to these artists though it pains me to. To me wood sculpture shouldn't be something expensive we just visit in a park, but something that we all engage in, well perhaps not everybody. But there would be outrage if knitting had died out, and although we don't all knit we all at least know of someone who does, I suspect carving with axes and knives will become like this. The least you could do is sharpen your pencils with a knife.

We are missing something, there is a big hole left by the mass produced paraphenalia we try to fill our lives with. People crave making things particularly hard objects that exist in 3D the things that you need in your home like spoons, bowls and chairs.

I fear 3D printers will prove to be a Red Herring, if you desire to bring manufacturing into the home why not try something you were designed for, holding something in your hands and twisting it around will always give you a greater understanding of 3D than manipulating a drawing on a computer screen, this is because when you hold something you are  "seeing" with your hands also. Wood is a beautiful robust material by far superior to plastic, why waste hundreds of pounds on a 3D printer when you can buy a knife for £15 and get wood for free?

I don't want to be a hippocrite (it is enevitable) some of my spoons are much more expensive than others, regardless of that side of my work I will always produce good quality kitchen spoons at a price that people will want to use them. And what could be more lovely than a beautiful little sculpture dancing round your kitchen.

Hilarious

http://imetateve.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/read-wonderful-article-about-barnaby.html

Axe Creed

This is my axe. There are many like it, but this one is mine.

My axe is my best friend, it is my life, and I must master it as I must master my life.

My axe, without me, is useless. Without my axe I am useless. I must swing my axe true. My axe must swing more sweetly than my cousins' so that they too are lifted higher.

My axe and I know that what counts is the risk of each throw, the sound of every chop, and the shavings made. Most of all we know that form is created and as such is a way of life. We create and so are created.

My axe is human, even as I, because it is my life. Thus I will love it as a cousin, I will learn its strengths and weaknesses. I will know its warm haft and cold steel, and the shape of its bevels. I will keep my axe sharp and ready, as I am sharp and ready. We will become part of each other.

I swear this creed before the Heavens and the Earth, which gave rise to the trees and ore. As I stand with my axe I am not alone in the forest, I stand with my cousins, we are the saviours of my life. So be it, until we realise there is no enemy, and restore the greatest wood culture to Glory.