It's funny how you never know what's around the corner. When I moved to Cornwall in 1999 I had never carved and wasn't even aware that I wanted to or could.
My son was born in late 1999 and I became the main carer. What did I do to pass the time between nappy changes? I started to write novels. Having written 7 novels with no success at getting them published it became obvious that I hadn't quite found the right niche.
Part-time jobs came and went and none of them seemed to satisfy me. It became apparent I needed to get away from it all and do some serious thinking about my future.
Harking back to my own childhood I fondly recalled climbing trees, making bows and arrows and generally messing around in woods. This was a bonus growing up in the countryside. I did some research and soon discovered where my nearest big wood was so off I went. Wandering through some oak trees I listened to bird song and enjoyed the rustle of the leaves as they swayed in the breeze. It was a heavenly experience. It wasn't long before my foot kicked against a long stick which I absently picked up and used as a walking stick for the rest of the journey.
When I arrived home I looked at the stick and felt the urge to carve something on it. Having no idea how to carve I set about looking for a local carving course which I signed up for straight away.
Unfortuneately nothing is ever as simple as that. I had to struggle to find the money to pay for the course. It started off badly when I was also told I would have to pay for a bit of wood to carve. I had no idea what I was doing but ended up with a small piece of lime. The instructor was good but he spent far to much time gassing about philosophy and various other non-wood related topics which began to annoy me. I spent so much time sitting on my posterior that I left the course vowing to teach myself.
Selling a large amount of books for half of what they were worth didn't matter as long as I could afford some proper wood carving tools. Before the tools arrived I walked through the same wood collecting as many walking sticks as I could so that I had something to work with when the tools finally arrived.
I spent the next twelve months teaching myself by collecting leaves, doing templates and then carving them onto the shank of various types of wood.
When I felt confident enough I paid a small fortune to attend a craft fair and took all of them along. What an eye-opener that was! I only sold two sticks over the three days. While I passed the time I took out my tools and started carving basic faces onto the small off cuts I'd taken with me. You can imagine my surprise when I sold the lot and most of them were not finished when said person parted with their cash.
I had one of those light-bulb moments then and the rest, as they say, is history.
I'm pleased to say that I am the only person carving tree-spirits in Cornwall. A fact I am very proud of. Since I started showing my work to the general public I have had nothing but praise which is why this website has been born.
I hope you like what you see but if you don't then all you have to do is contact me and I'll see what I can do. All you have to remember is that I rarely buy my wood. I use what I find lying in the undergrowth of Cornish woods. This is not because I'm tight fisted. It's because I want to keep the prices down so that everyone can afford one of my carvings.
I have no idea what the future holds but I can positively state that what I do is totally unique and each face is different. Please give me feedback. I love hearing from people so don't worry if you don't buy anything but you like what you see. It'll make my day.
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