After a long delay I have finally got round to re starting my blog. The World has changed considerably since the last one, I am having to change with it. Computers, Blogs and all the rest of this sort of stuff does not come easy to me but I just have to man up!
The late winter was spent coppicing the area we first worked when we bought the wood, its the end of the first coppice cycle and is extremely rewarding. Hopefully the wood will kick on again now. The woodland just gets on with growing and becomes even more beautiful every time we visit. The rest of the winter and early spring has been devoted to improving my chairmaking skills. A good friend of mine and chair making Master Craftsman Jim Steele invited me to his workshop to help me develop. His help has been immeasurable and since the lockdown our regular phone calls have been an inspiration. Making chairs, good chairs is a skill hard won. The chairs I made before were OK, some would say good, but after making a few changes here and there and learning to be less prescriptive and more "free" in the making process has led me to make a couple of chairs far better than previous, in fact far better than I would have imagined possible. Taking all of this into consideration though, they are time consuming, they test you, but the feeling of getting 20 plus hand made components to fit together to make the final chair, for it to be comfortable and look nice is something else! Going forward I hope chairs will become a much larger proportion of my sales but time will tell and people will soon tell me if they like them. All of the events I do are being cancelled one-by-one way into the future. I miss the social interaction, the laughs with customers, friends I meet regularly at the events and the public who come and watch me on the pole lathe when I am demonstrating. Everything will return back to normal soon enough, in the meantime I am trying to keep in touch with as many people as I can either through this Blog, Facebook or Instagram so if you see me about on one of these platforms please say hello.
1 Comment
Richard Dyson
3/5/2020 10:50:45 am
Your chairs look brilliant Mike. Keep up the good work.
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mIKE TAYLORGreen woodworker & woodland craftsman. Archives
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