Croft living on Dunnet head, the most northerly point of the Scottish mainland in an almost treeless landscape is where woodturner Michael and artist Liz collaborate, producing work inspired by the local environment and using local timber, mainly sycamore with some beech and ash.
    
The recent “Freswick Castle” series is the result of an artist’s weekend retreat at Freswick Castle on the North sea coast of Caithness.   Freswick is a Norse Castle built on an earlier Norse settlement around 1100AC.   The location is an important archaeological site and the inspiration for many stories and legends.   An extract from a poem by Donald Mackay “the Muckle Cod of Freswick” is incorporated within the image.  The round wide rim of the bowls reflects the sheltered bay and their rocking motion, the movement of boats on the water.

Liz and Michael have travelled the world extensively over the last twenty five years, exhibiting and teaching their craft, most recently at The Brigham Young University in Utah.   In October this year they will be guests at the Irish Woodturners Guild Annual Seminar in Co Mayo.   They have produced three books on woodturning, and a companion DVD to their book “Turning Green Wood”.   A fourth book will be published by GMC in early 2008.

Watch a film showing the stages from tree-felling to finished bowl:

High Bandwidth Windows Media version (6Mb)

You can download this film with your web browser. Click to watch the film in a new window, or in Windows, right-click the file size that suits you and select "Save Target As" or "Save File As". Select the location you would like to save the file to. To view the film you need Windows Media Player.

Contact Liz & Michael

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