Author’s Note: This post is the record of a conversation that took place in the year 2000 and also contains some quotes and reflections by the interviewer. Sadly I don’t recall who the interviewer was (if it was you, please leave a Comment below, I’d love to be able to name you). I offer this post as I feel that it is relevant to understanding my work and the deeper meaning and connections which are so important to me.

“What forms do angels take?
Maybe they take the forms we see
in the wood at first glance,
and then shape into being.”

Q. Tell me how this whole question started?
R. Well, a friend of mine said he was seeing a whole new interpretation of the symbol of the cross in my work. Although the cross is a very ancient symbol, it is seen mostly now as the Christian symbol, a reminder of a death, of pain and agony. As I’ve worked making crosses I’ve found them becoming playful, alive, taking on forms that could be dancing and moving. Perhaps they are helping to change the archetype.

Q. Were you conscious of any of this when you started?
R. No. I just started making crosses. The first one I did was for Minton House retreat centre about eight years ago. They asked me to do a Celtic style cross. I centred the cross on a knot that had a beautiful grain formation, but it wasn’t right in the centre of the piece of wood, so the arms ended up with different lengths, and the whole thing became much more organic than a geometric cross.

Q. So in a way the wood was working with you in defining the piece.
R. Yes. That’s how I normally work with wood anyway, having an idea of the form I’m going to produce, then selecting the piece of wood and seeing what’s in the wood that then begins to inform and interpret the end result.

Q. Does the cross have a negative association for you personally?
R. Not really. I was brought up a Quaker, so symbolism was kept to a minimum. In a way it has been surprising that I started making crosses at all.

A few years ago when I was in Botswana, I remember getting really excited about making a cross for a Catholic church in the middle of the Kalahari. A Quaker friend asked me at the time why I was so interested in making it, and I said ‘Well, for me it’s not a Christian symbol.’ I went out with the priest from the church to look for the right piece of wood, and the piece we found was remarkable in that in itself it expressed the figure of Jesus in agony on the cross. It was just the body, and outstretched arms making the cross. I had hardly to do anything to it. So that was a surprise for me. It didn’t fit with my own particular belief, but it had a lot of meaning for the people who were there.

Q. It’s interesting for me that when you allow the wood to speak as part of a piece you are not imposing an idea on it.
R. I have done some which were an almost mathematical shape, the standard cross. But generally I approach the wood with the idea that, yes, I want to make a cross, and then I sit with the wood I’ve selected, the piece that I’ve been drawn to for that particular project, and I see what’s in the wood. What would come out of it best…

… This one definitely has an angelic being in it for me. It reminds me that there’s perhaps an unseen quality or presence protecting us, guiding us … This piece was full of beautiful burrs, and became very organic, with the burrs becoming flowers that are growing up the cross. It becomes a symbol of new life, and brings in the quality of nature.

Q. I suppose in a way the cross is the simplest way of representing the connection of heaven and earth, and the human plane between them. How does it feel to be so playful with what has become such a sombre symbol?
R. I think of it as bringing life back into a symbol whose meaning has become rather lost in the rigidity of the straight cross.

Q. Has there been any interest from other churches for your crosses?
R. Yes. Somebody had seen one of my postcards, and wanted one for a church in London that had been burnt down, and was being rebuilt. And actually that piece of wood I found in the grounds of Pluscarden Abbey, which is where the Anglican priest who commissioned it had been staying. Two or three years later he was moved to another church and wanted to take the cross with him. So the church commissioned me to make another. And there was one other commission from a London church.

Q. It seems to me that as symbols of life your crosses have more to offer than the traditional form?
R. I like to think so. They can become fun. I had this one at a creativity fair the other week and a little boy was looking at it. I said ‘What do you think it is?’, and he said ‘That’s Jesus’ cross.’ His mother on the other hand thought it looked more like a ghost. Interesting that it should be that way round.

Q. Even though the theme is obviously the same, these crosses are all so different. I imagine that you could just go on producing them.
R. There was a period when I had just started making them, when I sold most that I had, and I had a moment of panic that I would never be able to replace them. But the inspiration was still there. I think these small ones will probably tend to be more playful than the others. Size in itself seems to bring in a different quality….Would you call this one a cross, or an angel, or maybe a bird..?

There’s one I’ve just started, about five feet high, out of oak, that’s for a grave. It will be a Celtic cross again. When I marked it out geometrically at first it looked completely wrong, very top heavy. Now it’s got some life and form in it, much more balance. It’s going to be clear and strong.
And this one behind it. What would you call that? A cross, a figure, an angel, a bird..?

Q. It’s beauty is that it’s all of those. Is that something about this new archetype? That it’s less rigidly defined?
R. Yes. And it’s about our connection with nature…

Q. It reminds me of Horus, the hawk-headed god of the Egyptians.
R. Maybe

Q. For me that links it back to more ancient times, as you mentioned.
R. And it’s the wood itself suggesting it. Funnily enough I hadn’t gone looking for this piece of wood, but within days of getting it back here and starting the design someone immediately showed an interest in it. I was simply looking through the pieces of wood in the yard, and when I saw this one I thought immediately ‘My god, there’s an angel in there.’ It’s an eye that I’ve been developing while I’ve worked here I certainly didn’t have it when I came.

As you say, there is this having an idea in the back of my mind, and looking at the wood to see what it’s saying, and then somehow getting the sense of yes, this is the piece. It feels to me often as if there is something else prompting me.

Q. Your work seems to embody quite well the aspect of Findhorn that has been about co-creation with nature, redeeming the sacredness of nature, allowing the Other, the Mystery to come through the work.
R. Yes. I’m just doing what’s there, with the piece of wood that came. I suppose the whole idea has been developing, and every now and then I’ll be shown another stage. George Nakashima says that every board has its ideal purpose, and its up to us, as workers in wood, with our skills, to find that ideal purpose for it. When I heard that it so much summed up my approach, really affirmed it for me.

Q. The tree is a living thing. How is the cutting of the tree reconciled? While I love wood, I always find that a little difficult to reconcile.
R. It’s a case of cutting it at its maturity, but before it has begun to decay or rot… …Personally I think wood should be air dried rather than kiln dried. And I also only use wood from local trees…

Q. It’s really important for me to hear about honouring the trees.
R. So many are cut down indiscriminately, with no awareness for their life at all, whereas if they’re cut down and used to create with, it’s like bringing back that awareness. Traditionally it was always done this way. The woodworker would select the tree or limb of a tree for the particular purpose he had in mind. Because the cutting was done by hand, there was little chance of it being done otherwise.

Q. It’s a completely different approach, isn’t it, than creating from plastic or metal, which can be molded into whatever shape we want…
R. I find that people will come up to pieces I’ve made and stroke the wood. They often say how much they love the feel of wood. But would they do that to a piece of mass produced wooden furniture? There is something we put in when we work it by hand. Of course I do use machines, but the machines are hand guided, not cutting to a standardised pattern which takes no regard of the piece of wood.

Q. I can imagine that if you reproduced any of your pieces it might feel different.
R. How could I reproduce any? The piece of wood is different each time, and will make the finished piece different.

Q. Even the quite uniform crosses, the subtle curves suggest movement.
R. Yes
Q. What you are doing for me is redeeming what for me was a straight-jacket of rules imposed by a dogma, allowing nature, and therefore my nature, to have a voice, to be honoured. I find your crosses make me smile. I think of Jesus as Lord of the Dance, and think that these images are so appropriate.

Q. Do you think it is the wood speaking, or something deeper within yourself? And is there really a difference?
R. Where does our creativity come from? Is it our creative self, or a creative muse, or are these simply aspects of ourselves.

Q. In being so playful and creative these pieces challenge the thought ‘If you don’t conform we’ll nail you to the cross’.
R. I feel very much one of a team. These is the inspiration, or the commission. There is the wood itself. There’s the publicising of the work, bringing it to people’s attention. From tree to the finished piece in its final place there is so much more than just me. Its never just my own personal idea and creation.

Q. How long have you lived and worked here?
R. Nineteen years now. The original workshop was here. I added the main section to it after about five years. Then about ten years ago I added this small display area and office.

The furniture I had been making before I came here was very high class, but very traditional. The person I trained with, Edward Barnsley, was the best designer in the country at the time. The quality of work was very high, it was very fine work, often with veneers or inlays. When I came here I immediately found that things wanted to have curves, and shapes and irregularity, and non-symmetry, and movement. Within a month of moving in I was splitting a piece for the fire and saw in it a box that wasn’t regular. It was curved, not right angles all round. But it took me a lot of courage to make it, because it was so different from what I had been making before. I had no idea whether people would buy such things. These nineteen years, after that early training, I have been teaching myself, and being taught by the wood.

Q. Nineteen years. That seems like a long journey. But maybe this craft takes that long. Maybe this is the sense of maturity I sense about you and your work.
R. Maybe. And I’m still changing. This year I can sense that feeling of maturity in myself. You could say it’s about time (laughs).

Quotes and reflections

….The meeting of tree with man is filled with drama. The tree started life in an earlier period of history; mature and fulfilled, it has finally succumbed to the woodsman’s axe and saw. This could be the end. Or the tree could live again….
….The trees fate rests with the wood worker. In the hundreds of years its lively juices have nurtured its unique substance. A graining, a subtle colouring, an aura, a presence will exist this once, never to reappear. It is to catch this moment, to identify’ with this presence, to find this fleeting relationship, to capture its spirit, which challenges the woodworker….
….The finest finish of all can result simply from aging…
– George Nakashima

The woodworker works the wood. And if he is receptive, the wood, at the same time, works on the woodworker. The forms they create then work on us, in a language we may not consciously understand. In the presence of Richard’s work I have the sense of this happening, a communication not of words but of beauty in form.

Is it the soul of the tree we hear? I like to think so, if the woodworker has done his part and has listened to the other within the wood.

As soon as Richard began his work here he found that he could no longer create geometric forms. The wood wouldn’t let him, and he would not force it. And so, in this relationship of 19 yrs, the bond, the listening, the conversation he has held with each piece of wood, has grown steadily deeper, has matured. He feels as excited about his work now as he ever has. And for me that is as important as his skill as an artist and craftsman. It is inseparable from it.

The cross

Jung – The ancient idea of the Anthropos, whose roots lie in the Jewish tradition on the one hand and in the Egyptian Horus myth on the other, had taken possession of the people at the beginning of the Christian era; it was part of the Zeitgeist (the trend of thought and feeling in the period).

It was essentially concerned with the Son of Man, God’s own son, who stood opposed to the deified Augustus, ruler of the world.

This idea then fastened upon the originally Jewish problem of the Messiah and made it a world problem.

The Egyptian story is of the triumph of Horus, the Adhista, the rising sun, the principle of light, over Set, the Ayik, the principle of darkness, the breeder of fear. It is the age-old story of the newly arisen divine light.

The Rose Cross represents the Rosicrucian problem of opposites. It is form versus the invisible that stands behind form, structure versus the unknown, conscious versus unconscious, man versus God. As such it is the symbol that represents Christ, or Horus, the being in which God and man are made one.

Robert Bauval and Graham Hancock – Keeper of Genesis

The Memphite theology was discovered on the Shabaka Stone. It is the story of a quarrel between Horus and Seth, his uncle, in which Horus loses an eye and Seth a testicle, and it is settled by Geb the earth god (father of Osiris and Isis) giving Seth the kingdom of Upper Egypt and Horus the kingdom of lower Egypt, up to the place where Osiris, his father, was drowned. But Geb then gave Horus Seth’s inheritance, making him the uniter of the two kingdoms (bringer together of the opposites).

Egypt, and the Nile delta, is seen as the locality of the ‘First Time’, the ‘Golden Age’, the Time of Re’, the ‘Time of Osiris’, the ‘Time of Horus’.

Osiris is the first to sit on the throne of the divine kingdom with his consort, Isis. Osiris is murdered by his brother Seth. Then Isis brings him back to life for long enough to receive his seed and subsequently gives birth to Horus, who then reclaims the kingdom (the story of the Lion King).

Horus is the hawk-headed god.

Caitlin and John Matthews – The Western Way

The period of the Egyptian pantheon is seen as the entire history of the world. So the Aquarian age heralds the birth of Horus, who will come as a saviour and introduce a reign of peace and plenty (also the second coming of Christ).

The reconciliation of the Horus/Seth principles, the reconciliation of opposing forces is the emergence of a divine redemptive principle. Black, like the rich soil of the Nile Delta gives its name to alchemy (Egyptian, Keme = black earth). The Greeks, who understood the symbology of colour, knew that the inner tincture of black was really gold, so although Apollo was depicted with black hair, his hair was symbolically golden (the colours of the spiritual world are the opposites of the physical world). Isis is the black earth, and the pupil of the eye of Osiris. Depicted as Black Isis, whose inner reality is the Bright Isis of the Stars, and who gives birth to Horus out of alchemical union. It is a union of opposites, matter and spirit, Isis and Osiris, Earth and Sun.

The rose cross is a symbol of spirit blooming upon the cross of the elements. Before the Rosa Mystica became the symbol of the ever virgin Mother, it was the Lady Venus’ sign.

From this comes the belief in a divine spark in man, a fragment of godhead buried in each of us. Horus, the uniting principle, ushers in a new age of peace and harmony. As a child he appears seated in a lotus, with his finger to his lips, signifying silence. Horus’ symbols are the two eyes of the sun and moon.

Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy – The Jesus mysteries

The figure of a man nailed to a four-armed cross would have signified the predicament of the initiate as a soul bound to a physical body. It predates Christ. Crucifixion is seen in portrayals of both Mithras and Dionysis.

The cross was a sacred symbol of the ancients. Its four arms represent the four elements of the physical world, earth, water, air and fire. The fifth element of spirit was bound to materiality by these four elements.

Plato refers to the desires of the body as nails that one by one fasten the soul to the body.

Dionysis, dying by crucifixion, symbolizes the initiates mystical death to his lower nature and rebirth as a god.

The fallen Sophia (the psyche) is represented by Mary Magdelene. Jesus redeems her from prostitution (my Mexico experience of crucifixion, and the release from my own ‘prostitution’).

Frank Wesselman – Spirit Walker

Our spiritual self- aumakua
Sometimes symbolised by Manu, the bird that could fly down from the upper world bearing knowledge (the Holy Spirit descending like a dove).

The cross could symbolize the bird, and thus represent the personal aumakua.

The cross as four directions, as the four elements – a symbol of wholeness.

The cross as the upper world, the lower world and the middle world.

The cross as Jesus’ aumakua, his bird form that he reassumed when his spirit withdrew from the physical.

The cross as symbolic abstraction of the shaman’s flight into the spirit world. It has been found even in Neanderthal artifacts. It is one of the earliest examples of symbolic expression.

Suffering as an avenue of transformation.
The physical aspect of humanity merging into its spiritual form.

The moment I look at a cross without the geometric starkness of the symbol I’m used to, something very profound happens to me. At first it was the Celtic crosses of Iona, with their linking circle, and intricate lacework of Celtic design, which bring an aliveness to this symbol of death. Now, surrounded by Richard’s crosses, not one conforming to rigid geometry, not one looking the same, the symbol begins to dances and move, to have a life of its own. To hint at all manner of mysteries behind that other mystery. And above all, to be playful, something which seems almost sacrilegious and at the same time truly spiritual.

Perhaps it is the retrieval of spirit within a symbol dogmatized by religion.

Richard Brockbank

Lived next door to Park with my family. Had craft woodwork business in shed in garden. Angel Card Boxes, Organic style furniture, Outdoor seating.