This article was first published in One Earth Magazine Vol. 4, Issue 2, December/January 1983/84.

Wood as a medium has always spoken to me. I had a good grounding at school in careful woodwork, and let my enthusiasm run riot making furniture in traditional designs. Later, while I was in Africa teaching metalwork, I remember repairing a wooden gate and feeling strongly that I should be working in wood. I began working with the local hardwood, muminga. Soon my teaching contract ended and I found myself back in England getting the extra training I needed with a furniture maker in Gloucestershire. It was good training in standard craftsmanship and operating a small workshop, but after four years I knew I needed to ‘go it alone’ and let my creativity develop. I needed to move away from the formal traditional style of furniture to a lighter, freer and softer style.

However my other responsibilities stepped in again and I found myself back in a village industries project in Botswana, Africa, where I ended up making coffins. But after my return to England I visited the Findhorn community to do a workshop on ‘Hidden Talents’, in which we were introduced to the concept of archetypes in the psyche called by names from Greek mythology. I found in myself a strong link with Artemis and a response to creating articles of beauty.

Eventually I and my family came to live at Findhorn and installed ourselves in a house between the Caravan Park and the Findhorn Bay as Associate members of the Foundation. I had vague ideas of making beautiful boxes and meditation stools but nothing concrete. The first image came to me when I was inspired by the beauty in some firewood I was splitting, seeing the ripple in a sycamore log where a branch came out. Then, as I sat in a concert at the Earth Sings festival and opened up to the music, I saw this box in my mind, waiting to be made. So I finally overcame my resistance and created my first non-symmetrical piece, just based on the shape and pattern of the wood. Later another image came to me: a very smooth block, like a stone, with a small drawer in it. When I converted this into material form, a very soft, curved box with a small drawer emerged, just asking to be touched and held. So that has become my ‘style’ – shaped, soft boxes made as though from a single piece of wood. I have developed the drawer boxes to have two or more drawers, each one made with minute hand-cut dovetail joints in the traditional way. I am also making lidded boxes, individually shaped and appearing to be one piece of solid wood.

Richard B Transforming Trees One Earth Vol 4, 2 (2)

As I work, I try to see myself as an agent or channel for the energies of love and beauty to flow through me into the work. My human task is to transfer the idea in my mind to the wood and to prepare it for the final shaping. Then, in effect, I hand over the responsibility and follow the shape suggested by the particular artifact. Although I ‘think’ about its shape, I also try to let go as much as possible. I try to keep an awareness as I work that each box is for an individual and will find its way to the right person. I have a particular responsibility to this person and to see that each item, each box or meditation stool, carries an energy or life force with it for them. I was excited when, after making a box for a friend’s Tarot deck, he saw the life and energy surrounding it. I see this as bringing spirit into matter and our lives, and I hope that people are touched by this when they see and hold my work. Even if I don’t sell much at a Craft Market, I do feel that people receive something from touching and admiring the boxes which weren’t just the right ones for them or as a gift for their friends. I feel I am helping to educate people to touch wood and see its beauty.

Some of my most beautiful boxes come from particularly rotted pieces of wood I have found washed up by the tide. Different woods have their own challenges—the softness of rotted wood, the close grain and resistance to removal of scratches from yew and sycamore, the hardness and strength of oak, the straightness in the grain of wood that is knot-free. By the time I’ve finished working with them I want them to carry a power and beauty that makes them demand to be touched and held. I think they have a role as pacifiers, objects to be held and caressed by people when worried or upset. I know that different trees bring down different energies, but as yet I don’t know which or what. Perhaps this will be the next stage for me.