Contact Details

Email: mail@toaig.com

Website: www.toaig.com

Small is beautiful.

Most of the wood used in the workshop is prepared from small logs bought from local woodlands.  This provides valuable income for woodland owners to spend on maintaining their woods.

The small diameter logs have to be sawn in a different way to large trees.  This leads to designs, which work with and clearly show the natural geometry of the tree.

I was born on the 17th January 1968 in Marske-by-the-Sea , which was at the time in North Yorkshire.

I was moved aged 9 to Somerset where my parents planned to become self-sufficient market gardeners. After a largely unhappy schooling I gained good 'O' levels and school prizes for Mathematics and Woodwork. Going on to get spectacularly good 'A' level results I set off for Manchester University confident of shaking up the world of mathematics. I soon found that success in the discipline required a lot of hard very dull work and that others had more natural talent. Calculating that woodwork might provide a more spiritually rewarding career than accountancy, after graduating I set about getting the practical and business skills to become a furniture maker.

I studied furniture at Manchester College of Art and Technology for two years during a short spell when the course was run by some very talented tutors. With a maturity I lacked at university I worked very hard, learned a great deal and developed a unique personal approach to wood as a material.

One of the talented tutors at MANCAT was Garry Olson and on completing the course I was offered bench space in Garry's own workshop. We shared the space for the next 6 years , I learned a lot from Garry and we collaborated ed on some interesting projects. We organised a number of joint exhibitions and these lead us eventually to the idea of the onetree project, a plan to make the best possible use of a single native oak tree. Onetree became a national touring exhibition of work by 75 artists and makers, a book, a website and an inspiration for similar projects world-wide.

I moved up to Scotland in 1998 and set up a small home workshop. During the course of the onetree project, which ran until the autumn of 2002, I produced only a small volume of work for private customers. Since then I have moved to a much larger building where I can work on a wide range of projects for indoors and outdoors. Discovering a lack of exhibiting opportunities in Scotland as a whole I became involved with the Scottish Furniture Makers Association, becoming secretary in 2003. The association now holds an annual exhibition as part of the Edinburgh Festival as well as a number of smaller regional events.

During the few hours in which I escape from work I like to get out into the fresh air - cycling, walking, kayaking, running etc. I'm also involved in the management of a community woodland outside Kippen.