And the role of craft in modernity
Green woodworking is a form of woodworking that uses ‘green’ or unseasoned timber. Trees have a naturally high water content that is still present when they are first felled. Sawn lengths suitable for modern joinery and construction must be either air or kiln dried to allow for the wood to shrink and harden as it loses its moisture. Green woodworking bypasses this process and utilises the softer, more workable state of the raw wood in order to shape it before it dries. In essence green woodwork is the ability to turn a tree into finished products without industrial processes.
While there is a long and fascinating history of what we now call green woodworking it is important to remember that working with green timber would have been the norm throughout history. Before the advent of saw mills and mechanised forestry our ancestors certainly didn’t wait around for their timber to dry, they would have found a need for a length of wood and then ventured into the forest to find a suitable tree which met their requirements. Green woodwork would have been the primary method of creation for everything from eating utensils, furniture to timber framed buildings.
As with most crafts the various methods and styles of green woodworking were highly localised to countries and regions from which they originate. In the UK specifically we lost much of our knowledge of green woodworking in the industrial revolution when the mechanisation of manufacturing lead to a dramatic decline in woodcraft. The last of the greenwood crafts to succumb to the industrial age was the chair making industry of Buckinghamshire where ‘Bodgers’ (woodsmen who specialised in making chair legs and braces) could still be found turning chair legs in the Beech woods until the early 20th century. It wasn’t until the 1980s that like many crafts, green woodworking underwent a revival and the UK began the process of relearning this largely forgotten skill.
The craft is now a developing movement of both hobbyists and educators with a growing number of craftspeople earning a living from the sale of products. Pole lathe turners are a common sight at county fairs and there are now annual festivals such the Bodgers Ball and Spoonfest that celebrate the shared passions for all types of green woodworking. Many skilled craftspeople offer courses in all types of green woodwork from basketry to stool making. The drivers behind the crafts popularity are many, there is certainly an irony in the fact that technology and the internet has immortalised and exponentially shared the skills far beyond what the last generation of chair makers could have ever imagined. I should warn you all green woodwork is highly addictive. There is a tremendous satisfaction in peeling away thin shavings of wood with a draw knife, sat outdoors on a shave horse, listening to the sound of nature and your tools as you materialise your creation.
There is a tendency to romanticise the craft that maybe the inaccuracy of the green woodworking revival. Anyone who has delved into the culture a little will recognise the familiar character of the ‘bodger’ dressed in a waist coat, hankie tied round his neck with a merry grin as he turns on his pole lathe. It is always tempting to glamorise the past, how many great ideas stem from a return to a simpler time? The truth is bodging, carpentry and nearly all woodcraft in pre industrial times would have been close to drudgery. For the entirety of history ordinary people crafted basic objects to improve their circumstances and make life a little easier. To this day the craft follows the same pattern of making functional objects. Hand carved rakes, lathe turned porridge spurtles, woven hazel fencing are all beautiful illustrations of the versatility of wood and the skill of the maker yet relics of a time and context that has certainly been and gone. While these heritage skills must be conserved and passed on we must now find new greenwood products to suit our modern context. This will likely be the subject of another blog post but this is certainly an area of interest for me that you will see reflected in my work.
For me the appeal of green woodworking is its accessibility. You don’t need a workshop, you don’t need power and the few tools that you need to get going can be acquired inexpensively from car boot sales and eBay. Conventional woodworking relies on a never ending assortment of fixings, adhesives and disposable blades while a set of hand tools can last several generations. Working with hand tools is far more intuitive than power tools and accidents are considerably less severe. Like all the best creative pursuits there is no right and wrong way as long as you’re happy with the end result. Children of all ages can get involved and skills are easily shared through simple demonstration. Rarely do you require a ruler or square as most things can be judged by eye. Anyone can learn basic skills from YouTube and with a little perseverance self-teach themselves to a relatively high proficiency.
For many of the same reasons it is accessible is also inherently sustainable. The wood must be green therefore it cannot be stockpiled and shipped around the world. This means we must look locally, often using the waste product from foresters and tree surgeons. It builds our relationship with our woodlands in a way that can only increase our drive to conserve them. The quality of timber is defined by how well the woodland has been managed across the trees entire life. Many greenwood crafts have evolved alongside the use of coppicing, a practice of heavily pruning a tree at its stump to encourage a cycle of rapidly growing straight poles which are harvested every 2 - 30 years. In the UK 40% of our woodlands are unmanaged and therefore not reaching their optimum potential for both timber products and biodiversity. This is largely due to commercial forestry being unable to utilise irregular stands of native diverse woodland. Could green woodcraft be part of the solution?
Many will question where green woodworking fits into modern society. We no longer need hand carved kitchenware for our day to day existence and it is true that hand made products while desired, have become confined to a small percentage of society that can afford them. In a time where the way we acquire new possessions through virtual online portals we are increasingly detached from both the resources and the makers that produce the objects around us. My journey into wood craft is still in its infancy and yet I already feel the power of craft is not the ability to create ornate objects worth many hundreds of pounds but the ability to teach and share my skills with others. Craft empowers us to choose between consumption and creation. It offers an alternative to the global market of mass produced goods and it puts us back in touch with our natural environment, our ancestral roots and the capability of our own two hands.
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