Ash Rise, a new exhibition from Scottish Furniture Makers Association (SFMA) will showcase the creative talent of 20 makers, artists and designers transforming the native hardwood into ambitious new pieces of furniture, art and design. The touring exhibition opens at Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh on 13 September before touring to Dumfries and Inverness and is supported by Scottish Forestry (SF), the Association of Scottish Hardwood Sawmillers (ASHS) and Creative Scotland.
Following the felling of diseased Scottish ash from Killearn Farm in Stirlingshire in November 2021 furniture makers, artists and designers were invited to propose new designs and ideas for working with this precious material. The resulting response sees ten Scotland based furniture makers and members of the SFMA propose new pieces alongside ten artists and designers whose work ranges from sculpture, design and artworks in paper.
The resulting celebration of creativity in Scotland is also a celebration of one of Scotland’s native hardwoods and its potential. Highlighting the versatility, durability and value to Scotland’s biodiversity, Ash Rise was conceived to both celebrate Scottish creativity and to inform people of the environmental and economic impacts of ash dieback, a destructive fungus affecting ash trees. The exhibition also highlights the sustainability of working with locally sourced native hardwoods, milled and dried in Scotland connecting each step of the process from ‘tree to table’.
The design selection panel for Ash Rise drew on external specialists in furniture design, including Stephen Jackson, Senior Curator, Furniture and Woodwork at National Museums Scotland, David Jones, Furniture Historian and lecturer at St Andrews and Christina Jansen, Managing Director of Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh.
In addition to Ash Rise touring the length of Scotland, Scottish Furniture Makers Association have commissioned a special documentary to reach wider audiences in Scotland and beyond. The feature film will document the life of the tree, its place in the environment and the struggles it faces. From forester or land owner, through to tree surgeon, sawmill, maker and buyer every link in the chain will be introduced, demystifying the process of how locally sourced furniture is made.
Ash Rise will also see groups of young people learning to work with wood through hands-on activities in woodland settings throughout Scotland thanks to Scottish Forestry’s Outdoor Woodland Learning network.
The 10 selected furniture makers are:
Angus Richardson Edinburgh based furniture maker Angus Richardson’s work is influenced by the philosophy of cabinet maker James Krenov. For Ash Rise Angus is creating The Phoenix Chair highlighting wood grain and featuring complex joinery, with a focus on ergonomics, incorporating seat weaving with Danish cord. These elements combine with a certain aesthetic vision and aspiration – the making of a quietly beautiful piece.
Angus Ross Aberfeldy based Angus Ross is a designer, maker, woodsman and public artist, best known for sculptural steam-bent furniture for homes, gardens and public spaces. For Ash Rise Angus Ross will create a pair of steam bent carver chairs pushing the boundaries of steam bent design.
David Buchannan-Dunlop, Lyne Studio & Steven Blench, Chalk Plaster have collaborated bringing expertise in fine furniture making and contemporary plasterwork together. For Ash Rise they are creating the Killearn Side Tables in both scagliola and ash fusing the two materials using undersquinted scarf joints. The scagliola will be pigmented with earth pigments gathered on the Killearn Estate.
Jack Sheahan (Sheahan Made) is an Edinburgh based furniture maker specialising in traditional woodworking techniques, inspired by Japanese philosophies of making and Scandinavian aesthetics. For Ash Rise Jack is designing and building a modern take on the unique vernacular chair form found in the county of Sutherland and Caithness. His ‘Caithness Chair’ continues his practice of modernising vernacular chair forms.
Kirsty MacDonald (SK Furniture) a Fife based furniture designer working predominantly in Scottish wood and particularly live edge wood. For Ash Rise Kirsty is creating a new desk with a live edge finish.
The Marchmont Workshop run by Richard Platt and Sam Cooper are based in the Borders and specialise in Rush Seated Ladderback chairs and have a wider interest in furniture inspired by the Arts and Crafts movement. For Ash Rise the duo are creating a chair and desk pairing influenced by Ernest Gimson’s Arts and Crafts designs, celebrating all wooden construction and exposed joinery.
Nikita Wolfe Murray is a self taught woodworker with a background in sustainable architecture based in Edinburgh. Contemporary sculptural furniture is the place where his creativity, skills, and background meet. His work seeks to explore the relationship between humans and nature and his pieces pay homage to the elemental forces of this world. For Ash Rise Nikita is presenting In Organic Media Console, a piece that aims to highlight the versatility of Ash though contrast. Contrasting shapes, colours, and textures.
The Orkney Furniture Maker’s (Kevin Gauld) work is a combination of traditional and contemporary which is influenced by vernacular pieces of furniture made in Orkney, local materials and heritage techniques. For Ash Rise Kevin’s Skila Chair takes its name from the old Norse word for shelter. The loss of Ash trees to Ash die back reflects biodiversity losing their homes; their safe place, their place of shelter. Kevin linked this with the design of a hooded Orkney Chair; a vernacular chair design. Made from local materials and built with shelter in mind, this design provides a safe place for a crofter to sit on a stormy night.
Sam Chinnery is a furniture maker and designer based near Elgin whose work highlights simple forms, geometric shapes, curves and the play of light. Sam aims to create furniture that fulfils its purpose in an honest and quiet way. He does this by selecting trees that have grown in the local landscape and allowing the methods of construction to guide the forms dictated by the function of the piece. For Ash Rise Sam is experimenting with steam bending to create a steam bent bench that uses the qualities of the ash timber in its lightness and strength as well as its flexibility.
Tom Cooper has been designing and making furniture for over 20 years. His designs are characterised by a graceful, organic element, contrasted with geometric lines and subtle features in the form of contrasting timbers and exposed joint details. For Ash Rise Tom is drawing inspiration from the forms seen in the seeds and leaves of beautiful Scottish ash trees, to create the Emergence Cabinet. The cabinet seeks to symbolise a sense of rising ascension from the disease and decay of the ash dieback epidemic.
The 10 selected designers, artists and makers are:
Alexander Johnston a Glasgow based designer exploring unconventional methods of sculpting wood and incorporating it into furniture. For Ash Rise Alexander is creating Die Back, a wall piece composed of cleaved healthy and diseased ash that reflects both the beauty and character of the wood as well as the devastation that it faces.
Duke Christie a Morayshire based maker and sculptor. Duke strives to create objects which reflect the simple things that enrich our lives and remind us of our essential relationship with nature. use local, responsibly sourced timber to make sculpted forms with hand carved textures. The pieces are often sand blasted, scorched, and scrubbed to enhance the grain, creating a fascinating play of light on highly tactile surfaces. For Ash Rise Duke is creating two large sculptural pieces which would be made from green ash logs.
Helena Robson runs HEFT Studio, a contemporary furniture and design practice based in East Lothian. Helena works with native hardwoods, crafting individual pieces that reflect where they’ve come from and how they’re made. For Ash Rise Helena is making a series of five traditional agricultural hand tools. A clod racan (rake), a stubble rake, a threshing flail, a grain shovel and a smaller shovel carved from one continuous piece of ash.
Kate Owens is an artist and designer who makes printed textiles with motifs that stagger and bump. Using an adapted block printing method, where the print block is also a wooden sandal, Kate walks motifs across the fabric using choreography and body weight to transfer ink to cloth. For Ash Rise Kate has created a naturally dyed and block printed textile hanging. The work is inspired by an early block print made by Phyllis Barron, a leading figure of the hand block printing revival in 1920’s Britain. Barron designed ‘Log’ in 1917 using the grain of a beech log intended for the fire as a repeating motif printed with natural dyes. ‘Log’ was printed in long lengths as a curtain fabric. In a similar spirit, I’ve sourced colour and pattern from the diseased tree that has been rescued from its fate as firewood by the Ash Rise project.
Naomi Mcintosh is an artist maker based in the Cairngorms National Park. Having studied both architecture and jewellery design, drawing and drawing conventions, the representation of spaces and the relationship between objects and human scale are the themes that Naomi returns to. For Ash Rise, Naomi is creating ‘Potential’, a suspended spherical sculpture made entirely from steamed bent ash strips. These strips are lightweight and interlock to creating circular forms. These circular forms then layer to transform into a sphere.
Nicholas Denney & Rory Dowling are two designers collaborating for Ash Rise. Nicholas runs Fife based Nicholas Denney Studio who fine concrete design and fabrication for private clients, architects and cultural institutions. Rory runs bespoke guitar design studio Taran Guitars.
Together, they are creating an innovative electric style guitar that celebrates the extraordinary capabilities of ash, particularly its flexibility and ease of bending. They also seek to redefine the perception of concrete as a heavy and functional medium by showcasing Nicholas’s exceptional artistry within the realm of concrete. To further enhance the visual impact and to get the most out of this dwindling resource, they intend to incorporate natural dyes sourced from both the ash wood and its bark, creating pigments to colour the concrete details.
Ploterre is a design studio / art practice based in Edinburgh creating artwork from environmental data run by artist / designer Rebecca Kaye. Working with data that describes the natural world, Rebecca is fascinated by how nature grows and adapts to its environment. For Ash Rise, Rebecca will work with tree ring data to create a series of prints. Presented neatly year by year, the tree rings are a weather report for the lifetime of the tree marking the drought years when rings are spaced more tightly together and the wetter years when they’re spaced further apart.
Richard Goldsworthy is a sculptor and artist born in the UK and based in the Scottish Borders. Richard’s artistic pursuits primarily focus on sculpture, reflecting his fascination with the interplay of light, darkness, form, and texture. For Ash Rise Richard is creating a wall installation composed of 40 to 60 individual pieces, each meticulously crafted to highlight the intricate patterns and textures inherent in ash wood.
Stephen Thompson is an Edinburgh based conservation joiner and small boat builder. For Ash Rise Stephen is designing a Skin Boat framed in Native Ash. The frame consisting of Gunwales, Stringers and Keelson with steam bent ribs will be made fully of Ash. The boat will then be skinned with natural flax fibres and linen, stretched over the frame and coated with a linseed oil based varnish to waterproof it. Using all natural materials the boat, will then have the possibility be fully biodegradable.
Stevi Benson is an artist based in the Cairngorms National Park. Inspired by the patterns and structures of plants, trees and insects, Stevi creates intricate drawings and cut paper artworks. Each piece is cut by hand using a surgical scalpel. These labour intensive pieces explore the macroscopic details of the flora and fauna in our landscape. For Ash Rise Stevi making a cut paper piece, inspired by the life of the tree that was felled. Focusing on the tree rings Stevi interested in the life lived by the tree, the time it was alive and the space it took up on the earth.
Ash Rise
13 September 2024 – 12 January 2025
Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, Inverleith Row
Edinburgh EH3 5NZ
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