article in the Observer
Nice article about me in the Observer Sunday 19 September 2010
A life less ordinary: Tobias Jones
We've had a great guy staying here for the past week: an itinerant spoon carver called Barn. He hitched here from London and rolled up looking just as I remembered him: wide braces over a woolly jumper, big beard and a big smile.
I met Barn more than a year ago in a wood in Herefordshire. He was the assistant to the green woodworking legend Mike Abbott and was teaching me, and a few others, how to make a chair. Since then he's got a so-called "peddler's licence" (for 17 quid from the West Mercia constabulary), a piece of paper that allows him to sit on any street corner and carve, and sell, his spoons.
What I like about Barn is his idealism: he doesn't sit on the streets because he's a drop-out, but because he's a true artisan who wants to share with ordinary people the beauty of his craft. He undercharges for his delicate spoons because he wants everyone to be able to buy one. Carving spoons, he says, is a way to "spread the love".
He wants, one day, to set up a sort of "spoon club" for schoolchildren so that they can learn knife skills and understand that knives can create real beauty, not just real menace. He talks about his idea of establishing a "pauper's caff" where hot, healthy food is served entirely on, or in, wood; where all the bowls, plates, spoons and chairs have been hewn by hand from trees. He's put his finger on what, I suppose, has always attracted me to wood as a material: it's so simple, so common and democratic. It's not exclusive, like silver or even ceramics. Anyone can find it and work it.
He stops with us for a week and is great company. We start each day sitting together in silence in the chapel, listening to the sounds of the geese and the wood pigeons. Barn is gentle but firm with the kids and is a huge help with all the work around the place. We spend a lot of the week just laughing. We all decide that he should come back and stay with us over the winter.
Each afternoon we sit and carve, creating a pile of shavings that the kitten and the kids distribute all over the place. My spoons are fat and lumpy compared to the smooth, slim models he creates with ease. When he puts a child's initials on a spoon, he does it by hand with a pick-knife, creating an immaculate bevel on the letters.
Barn's so used to sitting on the ground as he carves that we both sit on the floor while he teaches me more about sharpening and about various knife grips. It's obvious stuff if you think about it but I, like most people, have never thought about it.
Each night we offer Barn a bed in a spare room, but he pulls on his woolly hat and heads out under the stars. He's more at home in the woods. He's strung a tarp between a couple of hazels and sleeps happily out there each night.
His next project is to travel round Britain carving spoons in return for board and lodging and to write a book about it. It will be a sort of diary told through the people he meets and the spoons he makes for them. (If you're interested in a spoon or the book, we'll pass on your details to him.)
In the end Barn decides he has to get back on the road. I leave him at a nearby layby as he hitches towards Wales. When I look back and see the sign he's holding up, I notice that he's given the thick, marker- pen letters on the cardboard flamboyant serifs. That's Barn all over… unexpectedly stylish.
Article here
A life less ordinary: Tobias Jones
We've had a great guy staying here for the past week: an itinerant spoon carver called Barn. He hitched here from London and rolled up looking just as I remembered him: wide braces over a woolly jumper, big beard and a big smile.
I met Barn more than a year ago in a wood in Herefordshire. He was the assistant to the green woodworking legend Mike Abbott and was teaching me, and a few others, how to make a chair. Since then he's got a so-called "peddler's licence" (for 17 quid from the West Mercia constabulary), a piece of paper that allows him to sit on any street corner and carve, and sell, his spoons.
What I like about Barn is his idealism: he doesn't sit on the streets because he's a drop-out, but because he's a true artisan who wants to share with ordinary people the beauty of his craft. He undercharges for his delicate spoons because he wants everyone to be able to buy one. Carving spoons, he says, is a way to "spread the love".
He wants, one day, to set up a sort of "spoon club" for schoolchildren so that they can learn knife skills and understand that knives can create real beauty, not just real menace. He talks about his idea of establishing a "pauper's caff" where hot, healthy food is served entirely on, or in, wood; where all the bowls, plates, spoons and chairs have been hewn by hand from trees. He's put his finger on what, I suppose, has always attracted me to wood as a material: it's so simple, so common and democratic. It's not exclusive, like silver or even ceramics. Anyone can find it and work it.
He stops with us for a week and is great company. We start each day sitting together in silence in the chapel, listening to the sounds of the geese and the wood pigeons. Barn is gentle but firm with the kids and is a huge help with all the work around the place. We spend a lot of the week just laughing. We all decide that he should come back and stay with us over the winter.
Each afternoon we sit and carve, creating a pile of shavings that the kitten and the kids distribute all over the place. My spoons are fat and lumpy compared to the smooth, slim models he creates with ease. When he puts a child's initials on a spoon, he does it by hand with a pick-knife, creating an immaculate bevel on the letters.
Barn's so used to sitting on the ground as he carves that we both sit on the floor while he teaches me more about sharpening and about various knife grips. It's obvious stuff if you think about it but I, like most people, have never thought about it.
Each night we offer Barn a bed in a spare room, but he pulls on his woolly hat and heads out under the stars. He's more at home in the woods. He's strung a tarp between a couple of hazels and sleeps happily out there each night.
His next project is to travel round Britain carving spoons in return for board and lodging and to write a book about it. It will be a sort of diary told through the people he meets and the spoons he makes for them. (If you're interested in a spoon or the book, we'll pass on your details to him.)
In the end Barn decides he has to get back on the road. I leave him at a nearby layby as he hitches towards Wales. When I look back and see the sign he's holding up, I notice that he's given the thick, marker- pen letters on the cardboard flamboyant serifs. That's Barn all over… unexpectedly stylish.
Article here