The story so far: “I wanted to make something eye-catching,” said Carl Handy, “so that people would stop and look beyond their superficial assumptions about what they’re seeing, and actually see the materials and the way they’ve been worked.” Last time, then, Carl’s luthier skills brought us his surreal violin sculptures, that were apparently wilting with exhaustion after a night in the orchestra pit.…
The Old Grammar School, Blowinghouse Hill, Redruth. In a county like Cornwall — famous for its broken-toothed mine workings and the heavy brows of its granite cliffs long before the modern surf culture washed ashore — a name like Blowinghouse Hill conjures a picture all of its own, doesn’t it? Stern, institutional, crumbling and paint-peeling, the Old Grammar School is what Vivian Stanshall would have called ‘Miss…
In Wiltshire, not far from Trowbridgeshireton, beside a water meadow in the curtilage of a farm that’s home to a small community of craftspeople, you’ll find David Oldfield. Or rather, you probably won’t: there’s no sign on the door, no giveaway stacks of timber. “No-one knows I’m here,” he says with the dolorous satisfaction of the successful recluse.…
“Lotte, a gentleman’s dressing chest, was one of three pieces built for a wealthy financier – is there any other sort? – at the behest of his wife, who organised his life. For this piece, all she told me was, ‘Steven is quite conservative’ – that was the brief! So I took command because you have to in a situation like that.
