Wednesday 29 May 2013

Wooden Safe / Bandsaw Box



 This wonderful and weird wooden safe created by designer Alex Schlegel is an interesting, albeit unusual way to secure your valuables. The band-saw box features thirteen drawers, which rotate with the movement of the arrows that are stuck to their openings. The objects for safekeeping are placed into the large, central drawer through a hole in the bottom of the box. The cool thing about this design is that the objects in the safe can be moved from one drawer to another by clever maneuvering of the arrows and rotation of the whole box. This makes stealing or even recovering objects from the safe a very tedious task.

Wednesday 2 January 2013

Wooden Lathed Lamp Shade

I Stumbled Upon this great little film showing a lampshade being made on a lathe, Initially I thought 'what a waste of wood' but it is fast growing pine which was going to be firewood and the waste is the centre poor quality sap wood.

I would love to tell you more info, thickness of the shade, how many different timbers has he tried etc etc so if anybody knows please leave a comment   :-)



Monday 31 December 2012

Alexander Grabovetskiy Master Wood Carver

Alexander Grabovetskiy Master Wood Carver /Aalmark LLC asked me to share this video of his work. Take a looky at his Facebook page and prepare to be amazed :-)


https://www.facebook.com/agrabovetskiy





Saturday 1 December 2012

Environmentally Friendly Solstice Tree

This year we are having a Solstice Tree in order to save a tree !!!

I know that sounds like a bit of a contradiction but it isn't. This festive beauty is a heavy section of English Ivy I chopped away from a Sycamore tree on the banks of the Shropshire Union canal. The stuff is rampant in the area and has already felled many trees through strangulation. Blasted clean with a high powered pressure washer then interwoven with a string of warm white LED bulbs it looks far more stunning than these pictures can depict.


The way ivy climbs a tree has always fascinated me, the patterns formed conjures up images of an alien in the film 'Alien' clamped to Sigourney Weavers face.


So perhaps we could start a trend here and save many trees in the process !   :-)


Happy Solstice one and all   :-)

Wednesday 13 June 2012

Driftwood Delirium

There is something truly magical about driftwood as a material, totally unique and crafted by nature, the action of time, tide, sun and wind doing the work equivalent to many man hours of labour with sandpaper and tools which mother nature considerately delivers to your local beach as an art form in itself.



What happens now to this amazing material leaves many a coastal artist imbued in a fresh deluge of creative juices upon each new find.

Boys Day Out

The life sized Horses from sculptor Heather Jansch.


Interesting sculpture at Saint-Anne-des Monts Driftwood Festival Quebec

There is so much driftwood at Saint-Anne-des Monts that they have a driftwood festival every year where many carved pieces can be found around the town.

Three Men

Piano 2


Rikki Carette is a sculptor who gathers his materials from the Devon & Cornwall coast England. This Eco minded fellow cleverly combines two businesses, operating as Cleancoast Services keeping our shore lines tidy and using much of the collected wood for his quirky and comical sculptures available at Cleancoast Sculptures.

Surfer

Lobster


Also in England is Julia Horberry from Cornwall operating as Julia's Driftwood Furniture, her style of art being functional, she works from her workshop perched at the top of her garden and describes herself as 'one very happy girl'   :)

Driftwood Candle Holder

Driftwood Chair

Driftwood Mirror


Paul A. Baliker from Palm Coast Florida is a very talented sculptor sometimes working on a huge scale who endeavours to capture a moment in wood that expresses potential for a symbiotic relationship with nature.

A Matter of Time

Oceans 11th Hour

Just a tiny selection of the amazing art out there using driftwood, so next time you are walking along the beach and spot some driftwood let your imagination run wild and think of the potential in this 'junk of the ocean'   :)

Saturday 17 March 2012

Large Knobbly Display Bowl

This large display bowl has been created by laminating together four identical plywoods, a fifth blond plywood to add contrast was laminated to the inside of the base then carved around by hand in a random design to add a quirky and unique eye catching pattern. 


This is probably the most difficult piece I have had to sand so far with most of the detail being sanded by hand.
The finished result was well worth the effort though, an incredibly tactile bowl that makes you want to roll a marble around the inside like one of those children's toys !

Item No. 3121     19" diameter x 3" deep     12.5" diameter base     1.8 kg 

The base design as you will see from the pictures is not only carved into the darker timber by approximately 6mm but also raised above the base in a contrasting blond timber by approximately 6mm giving a pattern relief of 12mm between peaks and valley's. 




There is also a slight recess running around the exterior of the bowl to create a shallow carrying lip.

At over 1.5ft diameter this would make an unmissable centre piece for a larger dining table or as a display bowl in a hotel / catering environment. 


Finished with four coats of Linseed / Tung oil mix giving a subtle satin effect. This fruit bowl is food safe and extremely heat resistant.

As with all WeirdWood art pieces each item is absolutely unique with its own identifying number stamped on the reverse.

Handmade at the WeirdWood workshop in Staffordshire using only renewable energy produced 'on site'.  

This item and many other original pieces can be viewed and purchased from:   http://weirdwood.mysupadupa.com/