Sustainable Turned Wooden Vessels
By Nick Kingsford
Original artworks
Unique, turned pieces in yew, plum, cherry, ash and apple wood - and other British hardwoods
Various sizes
Ranging from £35 to £120
Nick is a creative artist passionate about design and the material he uses. He tries to make pieces look beautiful, feel extraordinary and also serve a purpose, beyond being purely an objet d’art: a synthesis of form and function.
He is painstaking and inventive and enjoys the challenge of creating something that both tests his skills and tantalises the viewer.
Each piece is circular in section (as it has to be from a lathe) but features flat surfaces and fine sharp edges linked by smooth and elegant curved surfaces. The circular geometry - combined with the flat planes, sharp lines and connecting sweeps - creates a visual dynamic to delight the eye. There is a powerful visual counterpoint between these three aspects which alters depending on one’s viewpoint and how the object is lit.
For him, the surfaces, whether flat or curved, should be silky-smooth to the touch. The sharp edges or transitions between one curve and the next should be perfectly defined.
"Wood is a very tactile, warm material and this innate quality, combined with silky surfaces and sharp edges, produces an item that is a pleasure to caress.: I encourage you to run your fingertips across the planes, curves and ridges.
"Wood is nature’s natural bounty as a raw material for makers. It's a warm, responsive material full of colour and grain pattern. It responds well to sharp, well-handled tools and releases strong scents when being worked.
"Each species has its own characteristics in terms of hardness, density, colour, grain pattern, feel and odour and these vary even from one part of a tree to another. This is why each craftsman-made item is unique and even items identical in shape and form will differ in colour and figuration."
Some of the pieces are delicate or fragile due to their construction and the form of the wood. This is particularly true of the extraordinary pieces with an integral captive ring. In a feat of carving dexterity, the ring has not been added but has been cut from the single piece of solid wood.
No trees have been felled for Nick's woodturning. He applies sustainable principles at every stage: "Trees are far too precious, as living plants, to kill for even such a worthy purpose. I use only naturally-fallen or surgically-felled timber. My lathe, in the summer at least, runs on solar electricity."
ABOUT NICK KINGSFORD
Four years of studying graphic design in London gave Nick a firm grounding in the principles of good design, based largely on Bauhaus concepts. His Dip.AD then enabled him to work in graphic design until he felt the need for something more adventurous: "Thirty years working as a land surveyor with a theodolite in the field and with pens at the drawing board taught me the value of taking pains and being precise. And I discovered the satisfaction of creating something that hadn’t previously existed."
On retirement he took up woodturning. For him, working with wood really is a joy - its odour, its warmth, its texture, its colours, its workability, its infinite variety, its response to careful treatment. It is sustainable, durable, widely available and has a timeless appeal.
"The practical techniques of woodturning are difficult to master. One must have an eye for shape and proportion. The failure rate is high because wood often contains hidden flaws or may split during working. A moment’s inattention can ruin hours of work. To achieve a perfect piece takes patience and infinite care but there is real pleasure in converting an unprepossessing log of wood into a beautiful and useful object."
He also enjoys using natural forms taken from the woodland or garden and made into something decorative, unusual and functional. These natural forms often sit well, as a counterpoint, with the precision of turned timber when combined into one item.
Most of the timber he uses is from Herefordshire, although he sometimes sources exotic timbers by re-cycling old furniture or from industrial off-cuts. Wood shavings are composted; offcuts, waste and spoiled pieces become firewood. There is no waste and no trees are felled.
Each item is totally unique and crafted in his tiny workshop in Fownhope: "Every object that I make is a combination of several hours of my time, my skill, my creative effort, my soul and my love for the medium. It is a part of me."