My collections include jewellery, home and garden products. Everything is handcrafted with materials that are acquired in ways that have positive impacts on the world we live in.
Where possible I up-cycle, re-cycle and re-use. Where that isn’t possible or practical, materials are ethically sourced and sustainable.
All of the wood I use has come my way through natural means, no tree is felled just for my products.
Jewellery
I started making jewellery after a period of experimentation using resins to fill and highlight natural cracking that can occur when turning fresh or green wood into bowls. When wood naturally cracks as it dries, it can create really interesting patterns that I wanted to try to retain them as part of the bowl, to make an honest piece together with its beautiful flaws.
From that experience I began to develop a range of pendants that combined the beauty of natural wood fused with highly polished pigmented resin.
Each pendant is hand crafted without any measurements or templates ensuring that each one is unlike any other, I wanted the owners of my pendants to have confidence that they alone are wearing that necklace, not just in the room but in the world.
Blessington Drift Wood Collection
The Blessington Lakes Drift Wood Collection is an exciting range of colourful pendants all cut from the same piece of hardwood discovered on an isolated shore of the Blessington Lakes in Co. Wicklow, Ireland.
Although up to eight pendants can be cut from a single slice of wood, each one is unique because the pendants are individually hand-sanded to a smooth, rich finish – some pendants require more sanding than others, so this also makes each one’s shape unique. The care put into each pendant – the sanding, Danish oil polishing, and finishing with beeswax and carnauba wax – guarantees a lovely, high-quality piece. There’s no template. No specific measurements. Just a beautiful piece that is what it needs to be.
Carlow Plum Wood Collection
The wood for this collection came from a vintage old plum tree that grew close to the banks of the River Barrow in Co. Carlow, Ireland.
Plum wood, indeed most fruit tree wood, is incredibly strong with a narrow bark that is firmly attached to the wood.
These characteristics, as it turns out, make it an excellent material for my pendents, I especially like the thin layer of bark that connects the resin to the wood, it reminds me of how in life there is always a something that facilitates or enables our connection to important things that are outside of our immediate world.
Dublin Bay Drift Wood Collection
The wood for this collection was wrestled from the Irish Sea on a cold, windy afternoon walk on Bull Island strand, Dublin Bay in Ireland.
I had no real idea if I could work with this wood but I had a good feeling about it.
My hopes were realised after many months of drying when I took the first slice off the log to reveal a lovely pattern of growth lines with hints of yellows, reds and browns.
Newbridge Bog Oak Collection
The Newbridge Bog Oak Collection is an limited range of elegant pendants and earrings all cut from the same piece of 3,000 year old Bog Oak recovered from ancient Bog land near the town of Newbridge, County Kildare, Ireland.
Big Oak can be a very hard material with densely packed growth rings that give a lovely symmetrical pattern and are very tactile when sanded and polished to a very high standard. These pendants extend from the heart of the wood, the oldest part, out to a once live edge where wood meets contemporary pigmented resin. They really are a slice of time from this moment reaching back thousands of years.
This limited collection contains pendants and earrings are cut without any templates or measurements so you can be guaranteed that each one is absolutely unique, no-one will be wearing the same piece as yours.
Home
My interest in products for the home has been with me for as long as I can remember. My father was a skilled carpenter and excellent problem solver. He was an inspiration by taking something that had broken or wasn’t working as well as he thought and repairing it to make it better in every sense of the word.
I followed his footsteps into a trade career when I started my studies to become an electrician right out of high school. The combination of woodcraft and electrical skills have served me well when designing and building better products for the home. Products that excel in form, function and aesthetics.
Bowls
I started to make bowls quite be accident.
At the time I was designing outdoor candle holders and working out how to create a perfect wooden cylinder with very precise grooves that would allow a halved wine bottle to fit snugly on top of it.
Well, I couldn’t manage it using the tools I had, so I signed up for a wood turning course in my local technical college. That opened a floodgate of opportunity as I quickly learned to fundamentals of using a lathe and turning wood.
The level of precision that could be achieved was exactly what I was looking for and the scope of products that I could now consider making increased dramatically.
Bowls were the third product that I made during that initial course and I haven’t stopped since. A good hand turned wooden bowl is something of beauty, and truly unique.
The process from fresh, or green, wood to a finished bowl is very long, often up to a year when you factor in natural drying and seasoning.
Using green wood means that I know where the wood came from to be sure that it has been felled either naturally or through unavoidable necessity. By standing where the tree grew I feel connected to it and know that it is going to a better place.
Lamps
My lamps have been a product idea that I have been mulling for many years. I love table lamps. I love how a well-designed lamp can set the tone for an entire room.
My experience an electrician has given me opportunities to become skilled in a range of ancillary crafts like plumbing and general construction. Those skills are brought together when designing and building my lamps using hardwood bases and copper pipe stems.
Garden
Who doesn’t love the outdoors? Nothing beats a breath of fresh air and I think we can do a lot improve what we have. My garden collection focuses on re-cycling and up-cycling as much as possible to keep true to my environment first ethos.
Bird feeders
My bird feeders are made from pressure treated sustainable softwood and re-cycled original Guinness bottles. The are build to last many years and designed specifically for smaller birds.
There is a choice of bright colours that give your garden a pop of colour and give the feeders an extra layer of protection from the elements. I also have a range of bird feeders treated with linseed oil that give the same protection as the painted range but allow you to see the wood in its natural form.