Cutty Sark off-cuts

I have a lot of off-cuts and fragments from my making of various objects from the ships timber.
Some of these I have found difficult to use in the usual way so I have created some other things that might appeal to the visitors.
The two seascapes utilise the hull timber immediately below the muntz metal that clad the ship, This has a wonderful crusty verdigris texture which looks just like a rough sea. The addition of some burnt timber for rocks and a turned lighthouse cut in half and skies using the more grained wood complete the picture.
I have bought a small lathe in order to turn the handles of the magnifying glasses. I lost my original lathe many years ago in a workshop fire. and never bothered to replace it but it has been good fun re- discovering the world of woodturning.

Waddling Penguins Return

I stopped making penguins in 1996 after my workshop fire. This month I have a delightful Czech toymaker, Jana working with me and so I thought it would be an ideal opportunity to return to them. They are bigger than before and have improved skis. Jana has made an excellent job of shaping and painting. They were originally inspired by waddling ducks made by Ron Fuller who had seen them in Nuremberg Toy Museum. I made them early in my toymaking career and they continued selling well for many years. 

A second portrait of Captain Woodget

Here is another portrait of dear old Captain Woodget, master of the Cutty Sark in its most successful period. This is painted on fragment of the rock elm hull ( you can see on the left the nail holes where the muntz metal was fixed)

Yoga studio and the Yogawall

At last, the completed Yoga studio.

Three panel birch plywood wall. Enough for 4 and a half students according to yogawall.eu!

Maple floor, a reclaimed Nokia stand from the NEC Birmingham finished in white Osma hardwax oil.

Dimmable studio LED lights (only 30 watts total)

Lovely dimmable-to-almost -nothing perforated plaster pendants.

The original Victorian fireplace now contains a Jotul woodburning stove on a Mexican handmade tile hearth.

The fish eye lens makes the space look narrower than it is. The space is 6x4 metres enough for 8 students.

The fittings for the wall are from www.yogawall.eu and consist of plates with a spring loaded socket that receives the ball of the other components. This system was designed by Kedric Wolfe in the early 80's after he injured his foot on one of the older system's wall hooks.
Each one of the 27 plates has been set into the panel in a routered recess and bolted through to a larger plate on the back.
After watching a number of videos of the wall in use I became aware of rather disturbing creaks so I mounted the panels onto wall battens with rubbercarpet underlay and introduced a 3mm gap between the boards so that nowhere is wood rubbing on wood.
The wall now will have to be tested before use by an expert on climbing walls. Fingers crossed. No make that legs crossed!

Now does anybody know any half students interested in Yoga!

                                                                   

The Star of India and Captain Woodget's portrait

I made this dinner plate sized version of The Star of India for the Twinings tea tin Christmas tree this year at the Cutty Sark. 

The original is a beautiful domed object about 40 cms in diameter which I hadn't seen before I made this version. A new one has been made for the stern of the ship and has the look of a jelly mould and is much deeper than the original. I did this from the original drawings so has a much sharper edge.  

A portrait of Captain Woodget painted on a piece of the hull material which is rock elm. It is studded with brass nails which were used to hammer on the muntz metal which covered the hull and was one of the reasons the ship recorded such high speeds.
It is the first painting I have done in many years.
Captain Woodget was much loved by the crew, fearless and eccentric he roller skated on board, was a phographer, bred Collies and took them to Australia. He was born on November 21st 1845, one hundred years to the day before my own birth.  

Circumnavigating E14

The calm waters of Limehouse Basin

This is Cito, a Thames Waterman Cutter. A solid 300kgs of GRP, ten metres long; she has six oars in line; six rowers sit on fixed seats, there is a cox in the stern to navigate and steer and room for one passenger. I was invited to join the crew to row from Greenwich Yacht Club across the Thames to Bow Creek and Bow Lock and then down along the Limehouse Cut to Limehouse Basin and back out onto the Thames returning on the long loop of the river to Greenwich.
I found it easier to pull in time when I could hear the oars dipping and the regular rhythm of the oars in the rowlocks. It was extremely satisfying when the six of us became a single unit working in unison. It was much more difficult with the noise of the river and wind and the choppy water of the Thames to keep in time.
Rowing, they say exercises 85% of the bodies muscles. I asked Peter Waugh the cox which were the muscles that weren't involved and he indicated the ones between the ears!

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Royal Seal of Approval

A Craftsman at the top of his game

HRH The Duke of Edinburgh was presented with a seal made from Cutty Sark teak at a dinner to celebrate the many years of his association with the clipper.
I have had this note from the offices of Lord Sterling

..... the seal was very well received by His Royal Highness. He was clearly delighted with it and insisted on carrying it personally from the table to his waiting car at the end of the meal and was playfully shaking the seal by its head to watch the movement of the body.

Subsequently we have had a note from his Equerry in which he describes the Duke of Edinburgh’s thanks for “the wonderful seal” presented to him. He goes on to say “it was very skilfully made, clearly by a craftsman at the top of his game”.

Strange cloud formation

 On Tuesday evening 8th May the sun came out after many days of rain and I just had to photograph the strange ripple of high cloud. Also odd is the way the panoramic reduces the huge sky to a such a small circle!
There is a little black triangle where I missed in the overlaps.

Seastar tricks

Probably best seen in full screen to catch some of the more subtle movements

birds

I'm always gazing at and sometimes photographing birds on high. Here is a crow in a recently pruned tree in my neighbours garden. I've tweaked it in Picasa as I wanted an illustrative effect rather than a photographic one

Captain Woodget's Collie

The most renowned of the Cutty Sark's captains was a keen photographer and  loved collies some of whom made the voyage to Australia. This collie is made from oak from work done in the 60's but she has a collar with original hull planking

panoramas

Playing with ICE, a free programme from Microsoft has resulted in these images. The top is composited from a 360 degree movie in my local park, Hilly Fields

This view is from the top of the house after the recent snowfall.


Below is my office taken from the centre of the room

Cutty Sark project

I have been asked by Cutty Sark Enterprises to make creatures that would have been found on and around the ship from the ships timber. Some of this material is from the original build, rock elm from the hull, teak decking oak and pine. It is not easy material to work - it is full of metal so takes a considerable time to prepare.

The creatures seen here are all from the teak decking. The ship carried chickens and pigs all part of my usual repetoire.

There are a lot of smaller pieces and my own offcuts from making the creatures which I wanted to try and use so I have moved out of my comfort zone and produced  a small automata of the Cutty Sark at sea. This is a mixture of timbers. The sails are from an oak refit in the 60's.

I am planning a colllie dog that Captain Woodget travelled with and no ship would have sailed without a rat or two!

behold the dodo

I felt compelled to show this first effort at a Dodo in sepia tones! I was first asked to do one many years ago but thought it wouldn't work without its big legs and feet but as you can see it has other charms, in particular the provocative little wiggle of its tail.

My Lovely Workshop

Discarded doors found in the mews and a tidy up for the Open Studios has brought a renewed affection for my lovely shed. The Virginia creeper has crept to places it has never crept before and rounded all the sharp edges with its cloak of green.

wooden pictures

I love sifting through all my offcuts and waste bits of wood and seeing the possibilities of them becoming something else. I have been making these little houses with bark roofs for some time but the opportunity to exhibit one at the local eatery Toads Mouth Too focussed my efforts. The picture on the left has sycamore from my garden and elm bark from Nunhead cemetery. The one on the right has pieces of oak from old doors from Goldsmiths College

craft&design selected (wood and metal)

I am really pleased to announce that I achieved the gold in the Craft and Design Selected awards. Thank you to all those who voted for me

The somewhat erratic Wag- o- Matic

I am not too good at mechanisms for automata, so after years of wondering how to wag the tail of a dog by turning a handle I decided on this simple solution. In the 1950's when I was growing up, the o-matic suffix seemed to be applied to a host of machines and devices, Wash-o-matic, Dry-o-matic, Wipe-o-matic. Take a look at the Verse-o-matic and Dog-o-matic

I see from a Google search it is still used a lot, not so much for machines but to make high-tech processes and software seem friendlier. I am going to revive my only other automata the Spratomatic using this simpler technique.  

Hall Floor

I have been planning this for some time - a printed floor, imitating Victorian hallways and paths. It was done very simply and quickly using roughly painted squares and triangles of cork tile printed on to a black painted plywood base. The hardest part was establishing the size of the tile. After the hesitant start (top left) with lots of guidelines it soon got easier and all that was required was a centre line, the position of the black border and an occasional transverse line.

Francisco A. Soeiro : Photographer

Francisco visited the workshop for a few hours recently. He is a warm, open and very interesting man. He is working on a personal project capturing images of arts and crafts people in their workshops with their tools.
I'm just amazed by the quality of Francisco's work.

I have never seen my fish look quite like this. It looks vivid but at the same time skeletal and transparent and.. magical. I look very much part of my world, proud Lord of my small, dusty domain, and just look at those hands, oversized because of the wide angle lens and strong and capable. 
When he visited he told me his wife was due very soon to give birth and they are now the proud parents of Orson, born on St Patrick's day and doing well. On the same day Francisco was diagnosed with a tumour in his mouth. He wrote: 

You know this is the stuff of life and you can only deal one day at the time. Sure, it would be a personal tragedy not to see my baby son grow up, but I try to stay positive and deal with things as they come.

He has an operation due on 8th April. I hope everything goes well for him.