Hello Everyone!
I am not sure why it has taken me so long before joining UKWorkshop, but then that has been the theme of my life......slow.......snailpace in fact.
My woodworking journey started at school (like many others, I am sure). I used to look forward to the woodwork lessons with such excitement. But it wasn't until I was on a family holiday in Yorkshire that I really set my heart on furniture-making as a career. Why? Well, we visited a small village named Kilburn, famous for its white horse, carved into the limestone above the village.
It wasn't the horse that had me galloping (pun intended) towards the decision to become a furniture-maker, rather a tour through the workshops of the late Robert Thompson, who was born and lived in Kilburn. The smell of the oak and the stacks of air-drying oak around the workshop and the village was intoxicating. I was enthralled watching the craftsmen in the workshops carving a little church mouse on the pieces that they were making.
The mouse, supposedly - and I quote here from Wikipedia - "came about accidentally in 1919 following a conversation about "being as poor as a church mouse", which took place between Thompson and one of his colleagues during the carving of a cornice for a screen. This chance remark led to him carving a mouse and this remained part of his work from this point onwards."
Apprentices from the Workshops of Robert "Mouse" Thompson started adding their own trademarks - lizard, acorn, rabbit and more. This set me thinking what I should use as my trademark - something not too difficult to fashion (I am definitely not a carver!), meaningful to me and reasonably easy to incorporate as part of the design, i.e. not "stuck-on". Well, it was some miles along the woodworking road, having been told many times that I was slow but meticulous that I decided a snail was rather appropriate. So, when I make a piece of furniture at my own snailpace - it has my unique snail as my signature!!
I am not sure why it has taken me so long before joining UKWorkshop, but then that has been the theme of my life......slow.......snailpace in fact.
My woodworking journey started at school (like many others, I am sure). I used to look forward to the woodwork lessons with such excitement. But it wasn't until I was on a family holiday in Yorkshire that I really set my heart on furniture-making as a career. Why? Well, we visited a small village named Kilburn, famous for its white horse, carved into the limestone above the village.
It wasn't the horse that had me galloping (pun intended) towards the decision to become a furniture-maker, rather a tour through the workshops of the late Robert Thompson, who was born and lived in Kilburn. The smell of the oak and the stacks of air-drying oak around the workshop and the village was intoxicating. I was enthralled watching the craftsmen in the workshops carving a little church mouse on the pieces that they were making.
The mouse, supposedly - and I quote here from Wikipedia - "came about accidentally in 1919 following a conversation about "being as poor as a church mouse", which took place between Thompson and one of his colleagues during the carving of a cornice for a screen. This chance remark led to him carving a mouse and this remained part of his work from this point onwards."
Apprentices from the Workshops of Robert "Mouse" Thompson started adding their own trademarks - lizard, acorn, rabbit and more. This set me thinking what I should use as my trademark - something not too difficult to fashion (I am definitely not a carver!), meaningful to me and reasonably easy to incorporate as part of the design, i.e. not "stuck-on". Well, it was some miles along the woodworking road, having been told many times that I was slow but meticulous that I decided a snail was rather appropriate. So, when I make a piece of furniture at my own snailpace - it has my unique snail as my signature!!
) but the technique still eludes me!
. Thankfully my excuse is that I am putting a new workshop together, having recently moved house (with all the jobs that creates 
).
).
