I am a teller of tall tales and tiny stories, a lover of books, birds, beaches and tea. Currently living somewhere between Pembrokeshire and my imaginary world, I am never far from a bird, a book, a beach or a kettle. This is me in the only tidy bit of my workshop, after a very breezy dog walk. That’s my excuse, actually my hair looks like this on a good day.
Pewter
I work with pewter. Pewter is a beautiful and often underrated metal. It is subtle, malleable, pliant, and makes wonderfully crisp castings. Pewter no longer contains lead. I make little pewter people running around on driftwood, and birds, using plywood moulds that are hand-cut on a scroll saw. I’ve been a maker since 2008 when I finally got around to starting a proper business. I’m still surprised by the magic of a perfect piece appearing out of a mould, watch the video and you’ll see what I mean!
My little pewter people are inspired by the illustrations in the children’s books I loved as a child. Those illustrations provided a place of innocence, warmth and safety that I hope has found its way into my work.
The driftwood comes from local beaches here in West Wales. Stomping about on a lovely beach on a sunny day looking for driftwood is a very nice part of my job. The driftwood gets a nice warm, soapy bath, a long dry out, a blast in the microwave (if it fits), and a whoosh on the belt sander to make a flat bit to sit on.
Lies About Birds
I love birds, I spent a lot of my education looking out of the window at them. I make them out of pewter, I make them out of paper, and I tell a lot of lies about them. I’m often asked ‘where do you get your ideas?’ From birds. They are worse liars than I am.
Bird Books
My first foray into lying about birds involved rescuing old books that were going to be thrown away and cutting a hole in them so I could fill them with paper mache figures and tell a new story. I make the paper mache out of the paper I have cut out of the book.
Lies About Birds Prints
By now addicted, I started seriously lying about birds when I found a very old field guide in a charity shop written by an ‘amateur’ (hugely enthusiastic) birdwatcher – the sort of book where the illustrations are difficult to relate to anything you see in the field and the descriptions are a little unreliable. I thought I’d write some descriptions of my own and make it look as though I had just torn the pages out of a real bird book and mounted them. My Lies About Birds are illustrated with paper birds I’ve made out of old RSPB magazines.
