Contemporary Craft Festival

Check out spoonsandbowlsuk.blogspot.com for details of this exciting show!

Showing Off in Ludlow 26th and 27th April

Lots of new work will be on show this weekend in Ludlow at the Showing Off exhibition.

New Spoons

Some new spoons for sale. Top row from left: serving spoons in Alder, eating spoons in Sycamore, Beech bent branch spoon. Bowl is from the stump of a garden rose, scoop to right is apple, and the other scoops are all hawthorn spalted and aged.

A Stirring of Spoons.

I've just had to decide which single spoon to choose from this pile for the first International Secret Spoon Swap.

The names have been randomly drawn and I now know who to send it to. It is all ready packed to go as soon as the post office opens again after the bank holiday. It is a secret so we will have to wait until the person receiving the spoon shows it on facebook. No idea who is sending me one so will just have to wait. It could be anyone from a pro carver to a first timer so it may be expertly finished or bathed in blood! Either way a lot of effort and care will have gone into the making of it so a special spoon is guaranteed.
The title 'a stirring of spoons' is my contribution to the ongoing debate about what should be the collective noun for spoons.

A few new spoons. Some individual photos on the gallery page.

Coloured Wood

No, I haven't had the paint out recently! These are natural colours created by time. This bent branch spoon is damson from a branch I found which had been cut off last year. The wood was fairly dry and hard as hell to work. The pink is a layer just under the bark so I left it on to show the natural curve of the bowl rim.

This next one is in Hawthorn which is carved green and left for the sap to stain the surface to a lovely golden brown.

Spalting works well with some woods and this Aspen scoup shows very marked colouring after being left in the log for 9 months.

We had a 60 foot Silver Birch blow over in the early summer. The base was rotten and had sent a brown streak up the trunk a short way. There was only enough of this colour that was sound enough to make a few spoons. Easily confused with Walnut at first glance!

Nearly all my work this year has been with 'firewood'. I keep interesting bits to one side for carving. Last week the carving pile was bigger than the firewood pile! Think I need to be more selective otherwise we'll be relying on heat generated by carving and not burning. That's OK for keeping warm but won't get the dinner cooked! There is a lot of spalted Birch which has reached its peak so I am roughing out as many bowls as I can.