I design and make furniture from a small workshop near St Ives in West Penwith, Cornwall. Prior to craft, I studied biology and worked in nature restoration, drawn to nature and understanding landscapes like the farm I grew up on.
Seeking to bridge a disconnection between my remote work on nature restoration and the living environments I loved, I quit my job and became a Postie in St Ives. Working along the coast each day, away from a screen for the first time in years, I started noticing things again - and eventually found my way to furniture making. These days it's the bike that keeps me looking, cycling the hills and trails of West Penwith.
I am drawn to rich forest ecosystems whose health depends upon the interdependence of trees with their community of fauna, flora and fungi. That sense of harmony stays with me when I think about furniture: how it is designed to support activity, how it relates to its surroundings, and how it endures. I've come to see the value of honing in on a niche, and realised how much wonder, beauty and detail matter to me - the more you look, the more you see.
My great-grandfather made furniture, and I often think about him - what it must have been like to be a reluctant farmer, quietly dreaming of making full time. I never imagined I'd find my way here, and I'm grateful for every step that brought me.
Since leaving screen-based work, I've realised that slow, analogue reflection - writing and drawing by hand - is vital to my mental clarity. I designed this desk for that practice: a space to sit, check in, and get on with the day without distraction.
I refined the design through sketching, scale drawings, and a maquette, until each feature resolved to support that ritual: a compact footprint suited to a quiet room; an upstand to rest photographs and books; a groove for pens and pencils; and a drawer for journals' safekeeping. Everything has its place, so you can sit down and begin. The desk minimises distraction - both while in use and through the ritual of journaling itself, which frees the rest of the day from overthinking.
Against its measured proportions, the planished ribbon on the upstand was hammered freehand, guided by eye and rhythm. At each corner of the frame, a mason's mitre is chiselled by hand.
I chose to work with an Ash tree with an exceptional ripple - a figure caused by an auxin mutation that typically sees timber reserved for premium veneers. Because the tree was claimed by Ash Dieback and left too long, the wood was marked by heavy blue staining. I embraced this as a record of the tree's history rather than a defect. Harvesting affected trees can help to protect those showing natural resistance, which is vital to the long-term survival of British ash.
The top is veneered over birch ply using reclaimed ash, and the drawer base is salvaged Cedar of Lebanon. The Steamed Pear is an agricultural byproduct, harvested at the end of its productive life. Its fine, almost invisible grain and warm tone make it the ideal surface for texture, allowing it to shine without competing with figure. This desk is an assembly of second-life materials, built on the belief that reclamation is as vital to a healthy craft community as the regenerative growing of timber