About Me

I was born and brought up in a town on the edge of Britain's industrial West Midlands. After finishing a Zoology degree, I spent several years travelling and working abroad, in between stints of living back around the Midlands. I began whittling wood with an Opinel lock knife (see below) in about 1994 whilst working at a youth hostel in Ironbridge, UK. This gave me an easy-to-carry way of carving objects from bits of wood that I found, whilst moving around and living out of a rucksack for long periods of time. I still use the same knife! More recently, I completed an honours degree in Three Dimensional Design (Designer Maker) in Exeter and have remained based in the West Country ever since.

I am always interested in commissions and thoroughly enjoy the variety and challenges that they bring. Recent ones have included carving large outdoor sculptures, a wedding anniversary bowl, small stamps with logos on for a ceramicist, restoring a badly damaged ebony sculpture and making a large, heavy oak bench on site from logs supplied by the client. If you have any ideas, please feel free to send me an email and we can discuss it further (go to the 'Contact Me' link at the bottom of this page and click on it).

Some of the artists and makers whose work particularly interests me include; the sculptors Constantin Brancusi, Auguste Rodin, Barbara Hepworth and Isamu Noguchi; the writings of David Pye, Dick Onians and Chris Pye; stone carver Peter Randall-Page and wood carvers Ian Norbury, John Nelson and Lona Hymas-Smith

The artists Richard Long, Hamish Fulton, David Nash, Chris Drury and Andy Goldsworthy

The 19th century Japanese wood block prints of Hiroshige and Hokusai

Netsuke by both Japanese and other makers (such as Guy Shaw)

The Jewellery of Rene Lalique

The sculptural furniture of Tim Stead, Hector Guimard and Jim Partridge

as well as the often anonymous makers of traditional African and Papuan masks and sculpture.

The objects which I make reflect my interest in craft skills, particularly whittling wood, wood carving, stonecarving and metalwork. I am fascinated by the stories associated with objects made by hand, whether they come from collecting the raw materials, forming the object itself or its existence after it leaves the maker and goes out into the world.