a well-travelled spoon


For various reasons this spoon has crossed the Atlantic and returned to France twice so far. It's just about to cross over again, to be a part of an event that I am passionate about.

Starting on September 7th 2018, North House Folk School is hosting a special wooden spoon auction to help to fund The Wille Sundqvist and Bill Coperthwaite Slöjd Fellowship. Here's the link: Coperthwaite Sundqvist Slojd auction

Bill Coperthwaite established a homestead in northern Maine to live a simple life based on handcraft. He was the author of 'A Handmade Life'. Wille Sudqvist, who died earlier this year was a celebrated spoon carver and bowl turner, author of 'Swedish Carving Techniques' and other works. Both men were passionate about the importance of handcraft in a society used to buying everything from a shop.

I was immensely privileged to be awarded this Fellowhip in 2017, and to support their fundraising auction I am about to dispatch this spoon on its travels yet again - this afternoon it will start its journey to North House Folk School.

In fact, this spoon was the first really successful folding spoon that I ever made, back in late 2016. Having made a few trial runs, none of which were very good, I worked out some of the basic principles of hinge design and managed to get this one to work.


This spoon spent some months in the rarefied atmosphere of the Fuller Craft Museum's 2017 exhibition  'Living Traditions: The handwork of Plymouth Craft'


It is more-or less a copy of an old spoon in the archives of the Musée de Bretagne, at Rennes. I made the spoon from a photograph and description, before I had a chance to actually see and get my hands on the original spoon. I had received the spoon back from the exhibition by then and I was pleasantly surprised to see how close it came to its original...


However, there is a lot more decoration on the sides and back of the old spoon that had not been apparent from the photos I had used. There were also subtleties like the chamfer around the edges of the handle that I now carve routinely, but which were not on this first attempt.

So to bring things up to date. The spoon traveled home with me again after Greenwood Fest 2018  where we had learned the sad news of the very recent death of Wille Sundqvist. I decided to donate it to the auction, but to modify it a bit beforehand.

I have added-in the edge chamfer, carved patterns on each side of the hinge pieces and on the back of the handle. Not exactly the patterns of the original, but in that style. I have been astonished and pleased at what a transformation these small changes have made to this spoon. It has become much more graceful and comfortable in the hand, and I'm really rather pleased with it.



















Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Paroirs de sabotier - French clogmakers knives

Image
These tools were part of a collection and are all in beautiful condition, with no rust at all. Some are almost unused. The man selling them wanted them to go to people who will use them. They all need a good sharpening, and most need the handles replacing as many have woodworm and some are broken. They will normally be shipped with the handles removed (I can omit the handle completely if you want, and include photographs for reference for making replacements). All have ferrules. I think the prices I am asking are fair. Yes you can get them cheaper on french internet sites, but I’ve never seen them in such good condition, and you’ll have difficulty getting them shipped!! This gives me a small profit for my time and hassle and covers my expenses (packaging and Paypal). Shipping Shipping will be by French Parcel post, which is the least expensive option I can find. Shipping prices are for tracked parcels. For UK buyers, I can post in the UK which is marginally cheaper, but sadly
Read more

Old, everyday Breton spoons

Image
In the breton countryside nearly everyone had a wooden spoon and perhaps a knife to eat their simple diet of soup, pottage, vegetables and stew - a spoon was often a peasant’s only personal possession.  These everyday spoons were kept in a porte-cuillères, (Breton: parheiler, English: spoon rack) that was usually hung from the ceiling or stood on a table. This photo is of a plain porte-cuillère  in my collection, with the spoons it came with, from a cottage in the village of Guerlesquin in Finistère. Porte-cuillères were a practical storage method to keep spoons dry, aired and relatively clean in a small cottage. At the end of a meal each person would lick their spoon clean, perhaps even wipe it on a sleeve and then replace it in the porte-cuillères, which could often then be raised up out of the way by means of a counter weighted pulley. In this way it was possible to allow the spoon to air dry - avoiding the development of mold. It also, in theory, prevented mice and other
Read more

teaching how to make folding spoons

Image
It’s that time of the year again, the summer round of green woodworking festivals is about to kick off. I shall be going to the Spoon gathering at Milan, Minnesota, where I’ll be teaching a pre-fest course making and decorating Breton-style one-piece spoons. Then back to Greenwood Fest in Massachusetts the following week. It’s here I’ll be teaching making a folding spoon for the pre-fest course. This is going to be the only time i teach this course this year. The two presentations of the same course that I gave last year were great fun, if a little shattering for me! The skills needed by course participants are not particularly high, but there is a great deal of precise detail for me to to explain, so I don’t get any let-up for the two and a half days of each course. I quickly learnt which processes needed lots more explanation, or just needed to be described differently. However, both courses went very well, with everyone managing to successfully make their own folding spoon. Some
Read more