Roundwood Fort at Trelissick

You may be surprised to know that despite the challenges of the season I find winter a deeply inspiring time. I especially enjoy seeing the trees in all their naked glory!

To my mind, the beauty of winter trees is one of the blessings of this cold and weary season. When the leaves fall the landscape through the trees is revealed, allowing the low winter light to filter through. I love to see bare branches which seem to allow the character of the trees to shine forth, suggesting limbs and a sentient life inside.

I spent yesterday morning surrounded by the beautiful trees of Roundwood Quay. This is a special place in Cornwall where several creeks meet making it a favourite spot for water babies as well as tree huggers. My interest in the area is further enhanced by Roundwood Fort. The panorama of trees above is a 360 degree shot of trees in the middle of this ancient Iron Age fort. The built up earth walls of the fort are still clear to see. Its impossible to walk through this area without imagining what it might have been like to have lived here during the Iron Age. Even though those ancient people didn’t have the advantages of modern life they had the most beautiful sylvan setting in which to live. I imagine it was a busy and thriving settlement. Did those ancient people love the trees too?

Trelissick tree

Tree climbers!

Roundwood trees

Mylor Oak

sunny birches

Scottish winter trees

Snowy conifers

As a child I played for hours in a huge beech tree in the woods near my family home. One of my earliest memories was of climbing up into this tree with great excitement, then getting stuck. I bawled my eyes out until my dad came and rescued me! On a recent trip back to the Old Country I took a walk down memory lane to see the old tree. To my great delight a fellow tree lover had built the most amazing tree house high up in the canopy. Turns out it was built in 2020 by my mum’s neighbours as a lockdown project. What a fabulous thing to do when there’s no school! I’m so pleased that the same tree I played in with my friends is providing fun and joy to a new generation.

Lockdown Treehouse

No surprise then that trees often feature in my work. Being amongst trees or making them is always a pleasure. I make fully abundant summer style trees and more delicately leaved winter versions. Copper lends itself so well to the aesthetics of trees, its natural colours echoing the warm tones of tree bark. The patinated Verdigris I use captures the verdant foliage particularly well too. A marriage made in heaven!

Click on the images above for ordering details.

Next time I’ll share photos and film of the making process…

Bespoke pieces are a crucial part of my work. More generally a bespoke commission is a collaboration between customer and maker which prompts sharing of thoughts and dreams. This is often truly personal with all sorts of touching family details. I regularly make special pieces for weddings, anniversaries or christenings - all the important moments in life, while sometimes I have the sad task of commemorating a much loved pet. It transforms the making process into a more involved exchange of ideas which brings huge responsibility with it. Its an honour to be included in people’s lives in this way and to help bring such personal stories to life.

A customer recently approached me to discuss a unique gift for her son. She wanted an automata that would encapsulate him and his family while also showing their combined interests and their pets. She especially wanted a nod to their home in America. It was quite a challenge to bring all these elements together in copper. I managed to record some of the different stages which I hope will help bring the bespoke process alive.

The images below show an initial sketch stage and the final piece. To see the carousel above the family group in action just click this link.

Initial sketch of automaton

The Finished Piece

The next gallery of pictures show the raw copper stages of the making process. I’ve added the final hand drawn sketch to show the translation from paper to metal. I use a combination of fine marker pens and paper cut outs to transcribe the sketch from paper to copper then cut the design using metal shears and a fret saw. Once the pieces are cut they need to be filed to get rid of rough edges. Next, eyes are drilled to suggest a more human appearance. I can spend quite a bit of time sawing and filing away at noses as the wrong angle can change the look of the face completely - the differences can be very subtle (I’m glad I don’t do rhinoplasty!). After everything is cut and smoothed off I add linear details either by hammering or taking the copper sheet through a rolling mill. More on these processes in a future blog post…

The biggest task is soldering all the different aspects of the design together. That too is for a future blog post. For now, I hope you get a picture of how the design aesthetics of the automata come together and how paper notions transform into metal.

To see a break down of the processes involved in commissioning a bespoke piece just click here.