News

Well,  summer is now in full swing, the holidays are over and we are refreshed and ready to face what will probably be the Christmas rush fairly soon. Sorry to mention Christmas but it has to be faced and last year the rush did start in September. In fact we've already sold our first Christmas box!

The holidays have been great with a wonderful trip to France where we visited friends in the Ardeche which is full of trees which made Peter very happy. Mainly chestnut in mature forests and our friend Eveline was a wealth of knowledge about the flora and fauna - our walks with her were fascinating.  She herself owns a small forest and was harvesting the wood and had made her barn roof from chestnut. It is a beautiful rich golden wood and looked stunning. She had her own stretch of river which we swam in and we did of course enjoy the local wine and some lovely food.

While in France we also spent a week in the Gers region, close to the Pyrenees with fellow boxmaker Andrew Crawford and his wife Hilary. They had the use of a very beautiful villa in exchange for some teaching. This brought about the idea of running a box making course there next year with Peter and Andrew as the tutors. The villa has a well equipped workshop and the accommodation is very comfortable. There is a pool, tennis court, croquet lawn and beautiful grounds to relax in during those non-box making moments! If you are at all interested in this course then please get in touch with either Peter or Andrew and they will give you the details.

So, back to reality and the box making world.  Interesting commissions recently have included a box inlaid on the lid with semi precious stones which were sent by the owner, each one being significant to him and his wife in some way.

Peter has just finished a series of jewellery boxes some of them in the most amazing burr woods. The ring boxes continue to do really well and we have just had an order from a pirate stuntman in Las Vegas who would like a HMS Victory ring box for his wedding. A pirate wedding of course.

In our village at the moment there are some very strange characters lurking including a pirate, coincidentally, a mole catcher, a mermaid and The Simpsons! It is our annual scarecrow festival which is great fun and I'll add a photo of our contribution which caused much hilarity as we assembled it in the rain last Saturday. Not sure we are going to win the prize for the best scarecrow but it is making people laugh which is all that matters!!

I'm beginning to think that there is more to box making than meets the eye. Recently we have had high powered meetings over endless cups of tea, deliveries in the middle of the night and rushed deliveries for boxes to be taken to the other side of the world.

First there was the saga of a large copper bolt from the Cutty Sark. An engineering firm in London who are undertaking the restoration of the Cutty Sark wanted to present the bolt to someone and needed a box to put it in... This person was flying out to Hong Kong in three days so could it be done "now"? "Of course" says Peter who seems to say yes to everything and then thinks about the consequences afterwards! The bolt was then rushed up the motorway by Carly who arrived here at one o' clock in the morning. I think we could have started some gossip in the village if anyone had seen her arrive at that time and hand over a brown paper package to Pete who then looked furtively up and down the road before closing the door.  The next two days were spent frantically making the box from scratch but it did get off in time.

Then it was on to the next deadline which has to be completed in the next two days - perhaps it's because we live in a society that wants everything immediately but in the case of Pete's boxes so much time and thought go into them that it is hard to work it that way. I went into his workshop yesterday to find him staring at his bench deep in thought. There was large piece of paper on the bench covered in illegible scrawls, lines, maths, drawings and covered with an assortment of tools. It made no sense to me whatsoever but then I'm not a boxmaker.

I will stick to the less complicated life of my hens who had a happy time recently when Nelson the cockerel decided to go and live next door with another harem. He's back now though and they're a bit fed up as they can live very happily without his demands. The gossip in the village is that the peacock has been banished and will be leaving us soon for another more tolerant home. I think we'll miss him in an odd kind of way but he is very noisy.

I don't think that Peter is ever going to be competing with Samual Pepys as his diary keeping is far from impressive. I think it all needs taking in hand and maybe I should try and keep up with it now.

I should introduce myself - I'm Chris, Peter's long suffering box widow wife who has recently taken the plunge, given up my day job and started working with Pete. The job description  mainly involves keeping some semblance of order in the office, answering emails, making the tea, packing up boxes, making the tea, ordering supplies, making the tea - you get the idea. It's a varied role in that I sometimes make coffee....  I work just in the mornings which allow me time to get out into the garden, try and grow some vegetables and chase the peacock that continues to terrorise my hens. In fact he's got a wife now and she comes and joins in and they both eat all the hen's food. Poor Nelson, the cockerel isn't able to stand up to them and hides in the hen house.

Anyway, back to boxes. It's surprising how interesting they can be and it never ceases to amaze me what a variety of uses they can be put to and what gets put into them! The people who buy them are universally nice and interested in the process and end up really loving the boxes. One man admitted last week that he keeps his cufflinks in his wife's jewellery box just so he can open it occasionally and give it a stroke!

We've agreed that I should get on with the office work and leave Peter undisturbed - he gets a bit cranky if I pop my head around the corner to ask a question so I'm really trying. So, if you do call and I say "he's in a meeting" you know why!

Meanwhile I will try and keep up with this diary and let you know what he's up to and hopefully it won't be two years until the next entry!

I thought I’d do another day-in-the-life-of. Hopefully it won’t be exactly the same as the last. I wouldn’t be that surprised if I went off on a tangent now and again……..

Up at around 0630 this morning, pot of tea made and off down to the computer. Check on the night’s mail - mostly junk but a couple of interesting ones that need a response. I really should ‘walk’ to work. I heard of someone yesterday who regularly walked about five miles a day as part of their journey to work and all I do is 20 metres! I know, compared with being squished into a tube train or sat in a six mile tailback due to road works I’m pretty lucky. No, very lucky. But I’m a bit worried about how little exercise I get. I really should go for a brisk half hours walk before making the tea... I do have a fair bit of self discipline – but not that much!

One of the first things to do this morning is to change the ‘news’ on the home page of this site. I made a rod for my own back when I started that because having ‘news’ that is months out of date is, I think worse than having no news at all but it is sometimes difficult to know what to say that’s new and exciting or even vaguely interesting! So it has to be done.

0820 I’ve done the ‘news’ not terribly inspiring but it’s done so I can tick that off the things-to-do-list.

I’m fed up with typing. It’s into the workshop for me.

1100 Well that was a couple of productive hours. I’ve finally finished a sewing box which I’ve had on the go since last October. I think it was promised for June. I’m not really sure why I’ve kept putting it off. Possibly one reason is that I’ve badly underestimated for it. I think it should have been about twice the price I’ve asked. You’d think that after all these years I’d get these commissions right but I don’t. I make the mistake of comparing them to the boxes I make in small batches and then just adding a little. Which looks fine from the customers point of view but these one off commissions probably take at least twice as long as something similar that I’ve done many times before and they always cause me great amounts of angst. It’s very tempting to say - no more commissions – I’ll go for the easy life and keep making what I’m familiar with and indeed what I know people will buy. But I think it’s important to throw yourself out of your comfort zone at regular intervals. Only then can you grow. Down the no more commissions line lies boredom; I think…..Certainly stagnation and a rut. ‘If you’re not living on the edge you’re taking up too much space’.

1405 after breakfast I tidied up the workshop and then sorted out the lids for the jewellery boxes on the bench. Matched each one to its box – the lids and boxes get separated after the wood is first cut – then planed one face and one edge of each lid. There’s several burr oak, a couple of ripple sycamore, a couple of burr elm and a couple of spalted beech. I think all the burr oak are sold already! Believe it or not that was all I got done in about two and a half hours! What was I doing I wonder? I sometimes think I should get a time and motion expert to tell me where all my time is going. Lunch was eggs – again... I shouldn’t grumble. Christine’s recently started to keep hens so we do have a ready supply of very good eggs. She does rather go on about them though. (Don’t worry – she never reads this)

1630 and still nothing done! After lunch I went down to the shop to get something to eat tonight – we’ve got friends coming -, I put some washing on the line then answered the phone to somebody who’d seen my work and wanted an 18 th birthday present for their daughter. Which meant taking some pics of boxes which I had on the shelf and emailing them to her. And then a paragliding friend called by just to say hi and of course we had to have a cup of tea and chew the cud a bit and now it’s nearly five o clock, my friends will be here soon so that’s just about it for work today! I’ll do better tomorrow – promise.

Have I really written nothing since last December! I'm ashamed of myself.

Well you're not going to get a great deal now I'm afraid because I'm off to teach a boxmaking course in Maine USA tomorrow at the crack of dawn (actually a good bit before dawn....) and I haven't packed anything yet...or finished the box I promised I’d get delivered...

Isn't it a fantastic feeling though when you finally get to the bottom of the paperwork pile. And why did I put it off for so long??

I'll write something about Maine when I get back. - Well I'll try - maybe I'll do the paperwork pile first.