Devon Woodcraft Company
Wood with Provenance
The Wood Story
At Devon Woodcraft Company, I work with wood that has a place and a past. Some comes from trees that have fallen locally; other pieces come from historic buildings and landmarks, where the wood has already lived one life and is ready for another.
The fallen oak pictured here was planted as a boundary tree in 1834. For 186 years it marked the line between two neighbouring pieces of land, until Storm Jorge brought it down in February 2020.
Its journey to my workshop was a short one, just over a mile. Everything that followed happened within fifty yards of my bench. The trunk was sawn into slabs here, and the forty to fifty freshly milled slabs you can see stacked in the barn were left to air dry before final drying in our own kiln. That’s what I mean by keeping it local.
Good timber can’t be rushed. I allow at least one year of air drying for every inch of thickness before I prepare the wood for a commission. Drying it slowly keeps the wood stable, so the finished piece is ready for life in a modern, heated home.
The pieces below show how I bring each client’s own story into the work. Whether it's a tree that stood on their land, a place reproduced or a material of significance , I aim to include a personal element to everything that leaves my workshop.
If you and your clients value knowing where a piece comes from, and want a bespoke and personal product,I’d welcome a conversation about what we could create together from local wood with a story of its own.
Bespoke and Personal
The Cove Table.
A place remembered in wood and resin
Based on Portally Cove, Waterford.
As the screensaver on Janina's phone shows, Portally Cove is her happy place. Every visit brings back memories of family, friends, fun and frolics.
So when Janina asked me to make a table for her gin and tonics, I made her a memory. Even the little boat has provenance, carved from the rope housing that stood in Milton Abbot bell tower for more than 100 years, it was the target for the apples mentioned in her comment below. That personal element is as important to us as provenance.
The Sleeper Shelves
The brief was simple: create live-edge shelves that stand on a plinth against a wall, without being fixed to that wall. The design was made specifically for that space and requirement.
The client’s work as a railway engineer inspired a detail within the construction. I turned railway sleeper plugs on the lathe to create the wooden pegs that secure the shelves to their uprights, keeping them level and in place.
The pegs remain visible at the top shelf—a quiet connection to the client’s own story, ready to be shared whenever he chooses.
The Aurora Table
This table was made for the owners of the land on which the tree it was made from once stood. They wanted a kidney shaped table he could keep indoors but carry outside on summer evenings.
While I was working on it, the aurora came to Devon. The skies over the workshop turned shades of green, violet and rose that we rarely get to see this far south. It felt wrong not to record those colours, so the cracks and checks of nearly two centuries of growth and one violent storm, were filled with the coloured lights of the night sky.
On delivery day, I took a photograph outside. Despite the original brief, the clients decided that the table would never stand outside again - said they liked it too much for that. It is a permanent piece inside now, a reminder of the tree that stood only yards away, and the skies that shone above it.
