The first really striking thing about ‘With the Grain’ - an exhibition exploring the life and work of Tim Stead - is the sweet, mellow, marshmallow smell of wood, which is everywhere in the Royal Botanic Garden exhibition hall.  This heady initiation is further compounded when viewing Stead’s collective legacy as a whole for the first time, for the realisation quickly sets in of just how timeless and enduring – not to mention widely imitated – this remarkable body of work is. 

‘With the Grain’ is an intimate journey through Tim Stead’s explorations and creations in wood, from his earliest experiments, which yielded the touchy feely 1974 Chess board and pieces created whilst studying sculpture at Trent Polytechnic and the Glasgow School of Art, right through to the abstract wood ‘drawings’ that Tim completed just before his premature death five years ago at the age of 48.  Along the way, the exhibition, which seems to echo a natural forest in its emphasis on horizontal display elements, takes in many defining Stead moments. 

Key amongst these is the North Sea Oil Industries commission for a Memorial Chapel in the Kirk of St Nicholas, Aberdeen (1989).  Stead’s approach to this response to the Piper Alpha tragedy was to imbue the chairs, lectern, communion table and rood screen with a symbolic reminder of the earth’s layered structure – the same layers that are drilled for oil - in the form of timber strata in different woods and hues.  Formally and aesthetically Stead manages to root nature in the spiritual world.  Indeed, such is the beauty and lyricism in Stead’s work, that artist George Wyllie refers to him, in his essay in the excellent publication that accompanies the exhibition, as a ‘Wood Poet’. 

‘Wood Poet’ is just about spot on, yet Stead’s poetic and sculptural sensibilities do not overwhelm the practical and functional nature of his furniture.  Stead’s work is never prissy and precious - far from it.  It’s is vital and perennial, just like the trees that helped create each piece.  In fact Tim Stead’s furniture and interiors for Glasgow’s Café Gandolfi are almost more beautiful now than ever, in all their patinated glory, after 26 years of constant use.  And how ‘inspirational’ these Gandolfi, and indeed all the other furniture pieces featured in the exhibition, have subsequently proven to be to a whole generation of furniture makers and makeover gurus.  So much so that Tim’s widow Maggy laughingly refers to the plethora of work available in the style of Stead as ‘Instead’ rather than Tim Stead!

But rarely have Stead’s admirers (or imitators) come close to the innate sensuality and intuitive craftsmanship of Tim’s work, which was born out of a genuine love and affinity with wood.  An affinity that subsequently led to the decision to help set up, along with Eoin Cox and others, the Borders Community Woodland - which has become linked to the Millennium Forest for Scotland – and the Woodschool in Blainslie.   As a result Stead helped set a prescient precedent in tree conservation in the UK. 

With environmental meltdown being high on this year’s G8 agenda, the various assembled world leaders could do a lot worse than to take a little detour from their Gleneagles meet and greet, and take themselves off to the Royal Botanic Garden exhibition hall where they will learn that working ‘With the Grain’ rather than against it can reap such beautiful rewards. 

With the Grain - The Life and Legacy of Tim Stead at the Exhibition Hall
Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh from 27 June to 4 September 2005.

Benmore Gallery, Benmore Botanic Garden, near Dunoon, Argyll
From 16 September to 31 October 2005.

Exhibition reviewed for craftscotland by Caroline Ednie.