New Life

This year’s North West Woodcraft Guild exhibition, New Life, is about wood: old, discarded wood, sad and lonely wood, and forgotten-in-dark-corners-of-sheds wood, wood that is waiting to be chipped, burnt, or buried.

Our previous exhibition, Grain, two years ago, displayed finished pieces, with emphasis on existing collected work. The challenge we gave ourselves for New Life has been to explore the material we use — where it comes from, its ethical ranking, its hidden beauty. We wanted wood to be the hero, the design influence, the subject of our work.

Luckily, we love wood! We don’t care if it’s old, we don’t care if it’s been discarded; in fact, the older and lonelier, the better. We see character beauty and integrity in every plank, offcut, and log. We dared ourselves to seek out this beautiful material and give it new life using the range of skills that abound within our ranks.

So, with carving chisels, turning gouges, pyrography burning tools, scroll saws, computer aided routers, the delicate cut of the mitre saw, finely honed planes, etc….we created our exhibits.

We’ve brought new life to old wood, and turned it into musical instruments, tables, sculptures, a screen, clocks, pictures, a carved mirror, blanket boxes, and even a river table with running water.

We hope our exhibition encourages the next generation to appreciate wood and understand how precious it is, and where it comes from.