Abbotts Living Wood

If anyone is interested in getting a flavour of my chair-making courses, then Red Chairmaker has captured it perfectly in this 17 minute film made when he spent a week on a course with a group from Korea a few weeks ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ad_84_uV-wU

If you haven't seen this yet, here's what was going on in Kentucky a week or so ago :)

Backwoods Chairmakers' Gathering On June 2nd, 2024, 13 of the chairmakers featured in Andy Glenn's book "Backwoods Chairmakers" (Lost ArtPress, 2024) traveled to Berea College in central Ken...

The course details for 2022 are now updated on my website

Courses Chair-making Courses I started running green wood courses in 1985, initially near Bristol, then in Devon, and since 1995, in Herefordshire: for 10 years at Clissett Wood and for 11 years at Brookho…

Here's my latest blog, probably only of interest to the real chair-making nerds plus those who took part in the developments described.

Ongoing developments 2021 In my previous blog, I wrote about the system I developed for assembling chairs in the autumn of 2020. In February, I put these latest developments into practice and made a couple of chairs for my …

Here's a wonderful selection of photos from the recent 'Wych elm Project'

Podcasts are the latest thing!! Unlike gazing at a screen, you can carry on doing useful stuff, while soaking up hours of entertaining conversations. A couple of guys in the USA have started a monthly 'Sloydcast' and you will all be delighted to know they are chatting to me on episode 8. The previous 7 episodes should also be of great interest to anyone interested in trees, woods and craft:

Sloyd Cast A podcast featuring spoon carvers, green woodworkers, blacksmiths and all those movers and shakers in the handcraft world.

Browsing through my bookshelf I found a French book about turning bowls on a pole-lathe. When I Googled it, this is what I found. Any French speakers should find this fascinating :)

Argenterie des Bauges / Jean-Paul Rossi Dans le massif des Bauges, près de Chambéry, Jean-Paul Rossi fait revivre le métier de jattier, ces tourneurs sur bois qui fabriquaient depuis plusieurs sièc...

So far, I've been kept busy this autumn but I found myself sat at this screen this afternoon with nothing particular to do, so thought I'd look through the video taken by my friend Leo, when I finally moved 'back to the garden' after 30 years of running courses in various woodlands. Beautiful accompanying music by Rich Ely and Tom Dillon, as well as lots of familiar faces:

Mike Abbott's transhumance In the autumn of 2015, chair maker Mike Abbott celebrated 30 years teaching green woodwork. On September 27th 2015 Mike made his transhumance, leaving the teaching…