Crafting Beauty from Recycled Wood

Oval turned wooden sculpture with turned hole through it

Simon has had a lifelong passion for woodwork, which started when making and selling horse jumps when he was 11 and bought a lathe when he was 15. Since then he has developed and honed his woodworking skills from designing and making furniture to creating decorative, practical and tactile objects.

He also has a love of nature and concentrates on drawing out the natural beauty and feel of the natural materials he is working with. He works with recycled wood and fallen trees, sometimes incorporating scrap metal and stone into his work.

Simon has over 20 years of teaching experience which he puts to use by offering woodturning sessions.

He makes all his items in his workshop in Westbury-on-Trym, Bristol and offers taught sessions at the Westbury Wildlife Park.

Sculpture of fused ivy branches turned to give a circular edge with metal rods between the branches

Design

Simon's furniture designs are often inspired by his love of mid 20th Century designs and the clean lines of Scandinavian furniture but with his own twist.

Sustainability

Simon is passionate about reusing materials. All his items are made from reclaimed wood and metal or fallen branches.

Simon also enjoys giving damaged or derelict furniture is given a new lease of life, often remodelled into something very different.

Influences

Techniques

Some of the techniques or styles featured in Simon's designs

Green Woodturning

3 oak bowls turned while green and now warped into ovals

close-up of the edge of a bowl with a copper wire threading together 2 sides of a small crack

Turned spalted beech bowl with rough cleaved edge

I turn many of my bowls from green (freshly cut, unseasoned) wood. Once turned, I let them season slowly and in doing so they distort due to the stresses in the drying process resulting in off-circular shapes. This allows the wood to dictate its final natural organic form and makes each bowl unique.

Kintsugi and Juci

For some green-turned bowls, the internal stresses created in the natural drying process lead to cracking. The traditional Japanese art of Kintsugi is used for repairing pottery using gold to celebrate the flaws in the item and highlight that, as in life, flaws are an opportunity to build strength. Rather than gold, I have used coloured epoxy putty that contrasts with the wood itself.

In some cases I’ve also used copper wire to “stitch” larger cracks together, inspired by the even older Chinese repair technique of Juci where staples are used to hold pieces together.

Cleaved Wood

Cleaving is the process of splitting a log with an axe or a froe. In my opinion, this gives a really organic surface which I like to retain as the edge on some of my turned pieces.

Shop Green Bowls

Shop Kintsugi and Juci

Shop Cleaved Wood