PreTown Workshops
What Is Pretown?
Pretown runs from Tuesday 23rd, to Thursday 25th July 2024
Each class will have a maximum of between 4 and 8 students each.
Covering a wide range of skills for beginners, intermediate and advanced. With varied topics such as carving, adze making and bowl turning.
Courses start from £210 including camping for the duration, lunch and some materials.
In the evenings, we will have a campfire and plenty of opportunities to meet everyone. A food van and bar will be available.
Pretown tickets will be separate from Spoontown tickets.
However, you can purchase ‘Combo’ PreTown/Spoontown tickets which include a £25 discount.
Pretown Timetable
Gates Open 3pm: 8pm
Registration: Collect Your Wristband
Pitch up: Tent or Campervan
Induction: 8pm – 8.30pm
Morning Workshop Session: 9am – 12pm
Afternoon Workshop Session: 2pm – 5pm
Morning Workshop Session: 9am – 12pm
Afternoon Workshop Session = 2pm – 5pm
Final Workshop Session: 9am – 12pm
Finish, Chill Out and Carve: 12pm – 3pm
Main Spoontown Event Starts: 3pm
Make Your Own Greenwood Tool Trug!
Cart all your greenwood tools around in style with this hard-wearing tough handstitched veg tan leather tool trug as well as leaving with all the leather craft skills you need to master the art. Aimee is a qualified teacher and experienced leather worker and with her business partner Pete will be there to guide you through the project, with 2 teachers for a maximum of 6 students
Learn many techniques of traditional leather craft including: Cutting techniques, Marking and punching stich holes, Traditional saddlers stitch, Installing traditional British brass saddlers rivers, Stamping leather, Cutting straps, Setting snaps or adding Sam Browne studs, Stitching handles, Skiving leather, Bevelling and burnishing.
Please note that £90 material cost will be payable at the start of the event.
All materials are of the highest grade and sustainable sourced mainly from the UK which includes all our brass rivets, and British tanned hides. We only use the best Italian or British veg tan guaranteed sustainable.
Bowl turning
When I got a woodburner for my home I began to gather firewood and started to wonder about the different qualities of the tree species. Working with hand tools is a great way to learn about the grain, strength and characteristics in the wood and the continuing fascination is this variation and the endless subtle design variations possible. What continues to pull me in is the love of using and enjoying handmade items in my everyday life, the simple pleasures of using a hand thrown mug, a turned wooden bowl and a handmade wooden spoon for my breakfast every morning makes my heart sing.
The wood I use is sustainably sourced from local tree surgeons, or coppiced woodland, and is worked with hand tools. My spoons aren’t sanded, instead they are finished with the skilled use of super sharp knives which leave a smooth yet faceted surface showing the final cuts. My bowls are made on a pole lathe with the tool marks present such as our ancestors would have known.
What Is In A Spoon?
She is known for investigating and carving a large variety of different wood species and has even realised that a lovely piece of wood can do more than anything to cheer you up! She has a lifelong interest in the value and meaning of making and its therapeutic and transformational aspects.
Deborah will be teaching how to make a pocket spoon, a scoop and a spatula….paying particular attention to the crank and the different planes whist axing the blank which gives the character to the spoon
Her practice stresses the importance of drawing (without a template) as a way of developing imagination and enhancing perception.
Suitable for confident beginners and intermediate carvers.
Basketmaking
The basket I will be teacing at Spoontown will be a version of my popular back pack, especially designed for both beginners and people with some basketmaking experience.
Day one will be creating the base and structure of the basket and starting the side weave. Day two will see us finish the weaving, creating a border, handle, and adding straps – you’ll also carve a couple of toggles.
All materials and tools will be supplied. Basketmaking can be hard on the hands, so if you have a loss of strength in your hands this might not be the craft for you.
Straight Spoons In 7 Steps
I am a Dutch ‘Greenwood- pioneer’ with more than 30 years of experience as a maker and teacher, both at home and abroad.
I have a background as a product designer and teacher, including at TU Delft (Industrial Design) and the Royal Academy of Arts in The Hague. In the more distant past, I was trained as an arts/crafts teacher. I combine practice with knowledge, experience and sometimes theory. I love to teach.
I would like to teach a tangential take on straight spoons (carving inward from the barkside) for beginners and more advanced carvers in seven simple, reproduceable steps, suitable for finding ones own’s shapes and forms in spooncarving.
This will facilitate your understanding of carving in 3 dimensions, kicking directly into the world of spooncarving without any need for templates or overdoing pencil drawing on your billet. We will cover all knife- and axe techniques involved.
On day two we will continue with a similar approach to carving minimugs ‘the slöjd way’, with a minimum of tools in a woodland- setting. The last bit of the course I will show you an approach for crooked spoons, and we will look into scoops.”
Designing a spoon
Lee is an ex teacher of art and design and you will start the course by considering approaches to utensil design. Firstly, Lee will introduce you to his methodology of drawing and generating ideas on paper before you step up to the axe block.
The second element of the course will cover the fundamentals of chip carving. Lee’s spoons are always highly decorated and his template shapes have been conceived to offer a large surface to chip carve. You will learn the basic building blocks of the craft before being encouraged to compose your own, detailed patterns to transfer onto a spoon.
The final part of the course will involve pulling all of these individual elements together. You will discuss the characteristics of Lee’s pocket spoons and develop a similar design on paper that you will transfer to a billet.
The multidisciplinary aspect of this course will ensure that skills learned are as transferrable as possible to your own practice. Lee understands the importance of originality in the craft and doesn’t just want this to be a chance to simply copy another maker’s work. He considers it an opportunity to experience the entire process of a full-time creative and use it as a vehicle to evaluate and improve your own carving.
Earth Oven
Adze Making
For Pretown Nic will be teaching Adze making- you will be forging an Adze from scratch once the initial shaping is completed you will then carve a handle to fit our head, the all-important final edge to handle alignment will be tweaked when the final bevel form is ground after you have completed heat treatment of the steel.
Kuksa Carving
Bringing home interesting pieces of wood and wondering what to do with them led to visiting woodland craft events and then a bushcraft course where a huge passion for learning about the outdoors developed. Paul enjoys carving, turning and weaving all types of crafts as well as a good walk.
Known as Kuksa in Finnish, Kasa in Swedish, or Guksi by the Sami people, these cups are a joy to make and use. From tree to finished drinking cup you will be shown and practice every stage of the carving process. Holding devices will be provided as well as all the tools and equipment needed, and you will be surprised at what you can achieve in a day. You will go away from the course with items you have made, the skills to share with others, and lots of inspiration to take things further.
