the Small World Driftwood Scavenger Co. ( which is just me under a long name)
was created in 1994 as an excuse to make regular visits to the remote
corners of the Cornish coastline whilst picking up interesting bits of
wood and scratching head as to what to create apart from a nice warm
fire and a hot cup of tea...after my first attempts sold to an unsuspecting
public i gained the confidence to start making even more cups of tea
and rescratching my head...from whence came many things.
Each piece is handcrafted using the only knowledge currently available
in my head and my hands , for this we give small mercy, and perhaps a
glass of wine later on, the wood is collected from amongst the craggy
outcrops that tumble into the ....see.... and i usually find, jammed under
rocks or scattered across a wet shoreline...clumsily carried on sore
shoulder up steep path and rocks and driven home to be dried any way
possible except quickly....bit of wind and sun does the trick....crafted
using time honoured traditions passed down through a network of trials
and errors...influenced by television and computers...NO...of course
not....just hang from a rock face over a pounding sea in the middle of
the winter and tell me that doesn't inspire...makes me think of
something anyway....i then finish the pieces in natural oils....
It is chemically simple and structurally unpredictable.
A tree grows quite happily towards the sky.
Someone chops it down and hopefully replants another one.It is dried
and ripped into planks and distributed around planet earth.
Many pieces arriving along the Cornish Coast have fallen from passing ships.
Or, trees can fall over in the forest and get washed down streams and
rivers and pop out into the sea.
By the time it has reached the shoreline it has been in a Oceonic washing
machine for how long only the tides can tell. Scrunched and crunched
with total abandon giving the appearance of........driftwood!
Then a handful of dedicated scavengers spend there time collecting it
and giving it a new home.
The hardness and different types of wood are measured by inches and
centipedes. And sometimes the Gribble worm.
