If you walk the Wolds Way from Wintringham towards Staxton you will encounter a steep climb through mature woodland at the top of which the path passes through a red wooden gate where the view changes from enclosed woods to the open panorama of the Vale of Pickering stretching to the forested slopes of the North Yorkshire Moors beyond. Immediately in front of you however is one of the sculptures that have been created along the route and alongside it a welcome bench to rest on while admiring what you can see.
The sculpture has been created mainly from riven timber which has been painted a bright red, this creates an enclosure and serves to accent a dew pond, a feature which would have once been common across the Wolds. Set alongside this are a group of figures carved from wood and painted white, they are larger scale copies of figures found nearby but carved originally in the soft chalk that constitutes the body of this landscape. The figures reflect people who have lived in this area and will have trodden these same paths for many thousands of years during its change from predominantly woodland scenery to the open arable aspect we are familiar with.
The same sun we know today has shone down each day as generations of humans and trees have come and gone, each tree possessing the almost alchemic ability to take sunlight and convert it into a material that is so useful and symbiotically entwined with our human development it is impossible imagining our species surviving without it. Trees saturate our folklore and early religions, provide food, supply the material for shelter and the means to heat that shelter. Wood can be shaped and fashioned into all manner of tools, utensils, furniture and musical instruments and gave mankind the ability to cross the oceans and expand his horizons.
The timber we use at Yorkshire Handmade comes from many different places, we try where possible to source european supplies but the products we make often requires timber that grows in North America. The growing process is always the same, the sun shines and the trees grow, each day a bit more wood is added, each year a ring tells how much sun that season was allocated. Solar power in it’s most beautiful form allowing us to carry on the tradition of using timber to make pleasing and functional objects, provide shelter and by utilising fire we can release that sunshine back when we most need it in the winter.
When we work with wood we are using something that was most probably planted by someone who has long passed on, we are using something created by summers that have also passed and with imagination we can look back down the millenia to the first humans who picked up a stick, used it as a tool and in so doing started a relationship with wood that remains today. Trees all share the ability to absorb sunlight and breath out oxygen as they create wood and in doing so providing our species with an indispensable means to survival.
Solar power on a stick, plant a tree and watch the magic.