Recently, Sylva Foundation CEO Dr Gabriel Hemery was interviewed by Tom Barnes, Director of Vastern Timber, about Wood Culture. They discussed public perspectives of forestry and the need to recreate an affinity between society and the natural world.
With thanks to Vastern Timber.
Despite the wet winter we’ve been busy at the Sylva Wood Centre completing the renovation of our old Grain Store. We’ve just completed this timelapse film, taken over several months, which finishes with the fitting of innovative thermally-modified hardwood products, including cladding, windows, and a door. The Brimstone products were provided by Vastern Timber, in turn supported by a grant from the Forestry Commission.
Oxfordshire Leader
EU agricultural fund for rural development
The building is almost unrecognisable from its former state, clad in asbestos and fit only for storage. Most visitors are convinced it is a completely new build.
Our thanks to all those who’ve worked on the building, and to our funders Oxfordshire Leader.
We’ve released another enews for those interested in our activities related to the Sylva Wood School.
We’ve enjoyed a busy autumn at the Sylva Wood School delivering many successful courses. It’s been great to have received overwhelmingly positive feedback from everyone who has taken part. We hope you enjoy reading more about some of these in the enews.
Our spring schedule of courses is now live on our website. We have a great range of courses available including some favourites with our expert invited tutors, as well as some new courses led by me. Perhaps we’ll be able to welcome you to join us on a course soon.
Our courses would make a unique Christmas or birthday gift for someone special. We have vouchers available on our online shop if you are not sure which course they would prefer.
Best wishes,
Joseph Bray
To find out more about our recent events, and the new programme of courses for spring 2020, click here.
Read more from our Sylva Wood School enews-Oct19
Earlier this year the Sylva Foundation approached Grown in Britain (GiB) to collaborate on a project to promote the potential of under-utilised home-grown timber aiming to inspire innovation and creativity. Students and recent graduates from Rycotewood, the renowned furniture college in Oxford, were asked to explore the potential of Douglas-fir and Alder for furniture making. To add to the challenge, the Douglas-fir was kiln-dried whereas the Alder was freshly sawn, resulting in differing methods of working.
GiB CEO Dougal Driver set out a design brief that challenged the participants to think creatively and work collaboratively.
Sylva-Summer-School-2019-GiB
Marketing at conferences and shows can mean many journeys up and down the country often end up with a car boot full of pull-up banners, folding tables, and plastic leaflet holders. Finding a beautiful off-the-peg solution that is easy to use and assemble, that displays marketing materials effectively and is well crafted in sustainable materials is impossible.
Your brief for this Sylva Summer School is to work exclusively with two under-utilised home-grown timber species, Douglas-fir and Alder, to design and prototype a solution. We would like you to develop a functional concept that can be dismantled easily, fits into a car for transportation, and is not too heavy to be carried by the user.
With only five days to develop a fully-functional response the group had to work at a fast pace. To kickstart the creative process they were given a talk by Sylva CEO Gabriel Hemery arguing the case for the increased use of home-grown timbers . This was followed by a tour of our workshops, timber store and recently planted ‘future forest’. There is so much to be inspired by the Sylva Wood Centre, but they were particularly taken by the ‘House of Wessex’, an Anglo-Saxon house being faithfully reconstructed using traditional methods. The day ended with a visit from furniture designer-maker Richard Williams, who gave supportive feedback on their emerging ideas. He encouraged them to explore the materials and allow that experience to inform the direction of their ideas. 
The project gave everyone the opportunity to work within the professionally equipped workshops and to experience working with both timbers for the first time. They worked tirelessly all week helping each other to solve problems and making the most of the opportunity to produce three excellent solutions.
Andrew, Carina, Daisy, David and Paul collectively produced three collapsible tables with some beautiful detailing – all ready to be loaded into a car ready for the next marketing event! We are very excited about the potential of these products and of these students. They are a credit to Rycotewood and have a very bright future ahead of them.
We are very pleased to promote the project during GiB week and believe that our summer school has shone a light on under-utilised timber species that could have a very bright future. We would like to thank GiB for working with us and their member Vastern Timber for supplying the Douglas-fir. After such a successful week we plan to offer an annual summer school experience to continue to explore the potential for home-grown timber.
The Makers
Tutor: Joseph Bray, Head of Wood School. Sylva Foundation
Find our more about the Sylva Wood School
Summer School 2019 group with Tutor Joseph Bray
Last Wednesday evening we opened the doors of our brand new Teaching Barn to promote the vision for the Sylva Wood School.
We enjoyed showing our trustees, funders, collaborators and friends from industry around our well-equipped teaching venue and explaining future planned developments for the Wood Centre. Some of the creative businesses we host also opened up their workshops, highlighting the incredible community that has rapidly developed over the past three years – it was clear to see the potential for any students coming onto the site to learn from such a diverse range of experts.
Teaching Barn at the Sylva Wood Centre
The feedback from the evening was overwhelmingly positive. It was wonderful to see the furniture industry well-represented by Dids Macdonald and Tony Smart of the Furniture Makers Company, designer-makers Richard Williams and Philip Koomen, as well as representatives of heavyweights such as William Hands and Ercol. We look forward to further strengthening our relationship with the sector to teach and guide people into the industry.
Joseph Bray, Head of Wood School, shared his thoughts on the future of education in the wood sector focussing on the opportunities to deliver excellence in education and business enterprise.
“Schools have changed from woodwork to much broader D&T and over the past 10 years the decline in entries to GCSE has reduced by well over 50% The emphasis of these courses has significantly moved away from making! Colleges offering vocational furniture training can almost be counted on one hand and University level craft programmes have declined significantly some closing workshops and some closing all together. Often graduates are pushed out into the world with varying levels of support and guidance.
“An exception to the rule is our close neighbour Rycotewood in Oxford. We hope to enhance our close relationship continuing to work closely with staff, students and graduates.
“The future can feel bleak, however we exist outside the formal education system and as a creative and flexible organisation we are able to offer a range of programmes that will plug some of the gaps. We plan to build a schools programme for those unable to access making on the school curriculum. We will provide workshops and skills training to students who cannot access this at college or University and we will continue the excellent work already started in providing support for graduates within the community of creative enterprises that make up our site.”
Joseph is midway through an inspiring Churchill Fellowship, travelling to world-renowned institutions delivering furniture craft education in USA and Europe. He is investigating how they continue to support students to learn craft skills in light of the challenges within the education sector and how students are supported on graduation. This experience is especially helpful at this stage of the development of our Wood School. He is off to Europe in March and we look forward to hearing what he has learnt on his return.
We are currently delivering a programme of weekend courses using some excellent external tutors as we build up to the launch of a range courses in the summer and beyond – watch this space for some exciting opportunities. Read more
Sylva Foundation is very grateful to the following funders for their support in constructing and furnishing the Teaching Barn: Aspen Trust, D’Oyly Carte Charitable Trust, Oxfordshire LEADER, People’s Postcode Lottery, Shanly Foundation.
All courses will be supported by our new dedicated Teaching Barn, and overseen by our newly appointed Head of Wood School, Joe Bray.
| Guitar maintenance & repair – with local luthier Steve Kendall
Learn how to perform guitar ‘set-ups’ so that your guitar sounds and plays at its best. Saturday 26th January 2019, 9:30am – 4:00pm. Cost £100.
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 Steve Kendall guitar course |
| Make a canoe paddle – with award-winning boat builder Colin Henwood
During this two-day course you will learn how to shape a single canoe paddle from Ash using hand tools. Saturday 2nd and Sunday 3rd February, 2019, 9.00am to 5.00pm. Cost £225.
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 Colin Henwood with students making a canoe paddle at the Sylva Wood Centre |
| Make a green wood stool – with green woodworker Peter Wood
Working with green wood using simple hand tools, by the end of this two-day course you will make a three-legged stool. Saturday 9th and Sunday 10th February, 2019, 9:30am – 4:00pm. Cost £225.
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 Green stool making course at Sylva Wood Centre |
| Pole lathe course – with green woodworker Peter Wood
A two-day course to learn how to work with green wood using simple hand tools, and a pole lathe, to create a stool with turned legs. Saturday 9th and Sunday 10th March, 2019, 9:30am – 4:00pm. Cost £225.
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 Pole lathe course |
| Saxon Building Woodwork, or ‘Treewrighting’ – with Damian Goodburn
Learn about Anglo-Saxon building woodwork, based mainly on the study of surviving wooden remains, including a review of relatively new evidence, with live demonstrations of tools and techniques, and opportunities to watch treewrighting in action. Led by leading archaeological woodwork specialist Damian Goodburn BA PhD. Saturday 23rd March 2019, 10.00am-4.00pm Cost £75.
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 Saxon broad axe work |
| Treewighting and timber-framing – with the Carpenters Fellowship – £100
During this unique one day treewrighting course you will learn and develop skills and knowledge in the making of a timber-frame using traditional tools and techniques. Five one-day courses available which can also be booked as a block. Available on 20th,21st,22nd 23rd & 24th March 2019, 9.00am-5.00pm. Cost £100 per day.
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 Carpenters’ Fellowship training at the Sylva Wood Centre |
| Hurdle making – with coppice worker and craftsman Simon Farndon
Students will be taught hazel splitting and how to make hurdles on the Saturday and then will practise making hurdles on the Sunday. Saturday 23rd and Sunday 24th March 2019, 10.00am-4.00pm. Cost £200.
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 Hurdle-making with Simon Farndon |
| Make a canoe paddle – with award-winning boat builder Colin Henwood
During this two-day course you will learn how to shape a single canoe paddle from ash using hand tools. Saturday 27th and Sunday 28th April, 2019, 9.00am to 5.00pm. Cost £225.
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Colin Henwood with students making a canoe paddle at the Sylva Wood Centre |
Full terms and conditions available at www.sylva.org.uk/courses
Learn and practise how to split hazel and make hurdles with coppice worker and craftsman Simon Farndon during this two-day course at the Sylva Wood Centre.
Students will be taught hazel splitting and how to make hurdles on the Saturday and then will practise making hurdles on the Sunday.
Hazel hurdles are a very popular and attractive alternative to garden panels or garden screens and wind breaks. Split (cleft) and round hazel rods are woven around hazel uprights (zales). There are slight variations on design between different regions, but students will learn to make the most robust hurdles using good quality graded split hazel, which is twisted around end posts to produce a very strong and robust hurdle.
The hurdles that students make will be used in the Anglo-Saxon reconstruction of the House of Wessex, to be built over the summer of 2019. If they wish, students on this course will be welcome to volunteer to help with this by making more hurdles later in the year, or by helping fix hurdels to the wall annd roof structure of the building.
By taking part, students will not only help in this exciting volunteer project, but leave with the requisite skills to make their own hurdles at home.
Cost £200. Lunch provided. Maximum of 8 places.
We are pleased to offer five one-day courses in treewrighting and timber-framing, from 20th to 24th March.
House of Wessex timber frame
During this one-day course you will learn and develop skills in the making of a timber-frame using traditional tools and techniques. Teaching will be provided by highly experienced craftspeople in the Carpenters’ Fellowship. Learning will include a selection of the following, catering for a wide range of skill and experience :
Full training will be provided (no prior experience necessary). Although you will be working undercover, the course will be ‘outdoors’, so you will need to wear appropriate clothing.
Drinks and hot food will be provided, including breakfast, lunch and dinner. Overnight camping (bring your own tent) may be available on the site, or locally. More details will follow your booking.
A programme of evening events will also be on offer, including a range of talks on relevant craft and history, and social events.
You may book for more than one day. Please note that the activities will be physically demanding, so please take this into account before you sign up to all five days!
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Date
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Book here
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| Wednesday, 20th March 2019 |  |
| Thursday, 21st March 2019 | |
| Friday, 22nd March 2019 | |
| Saturday, 23rd March 2019 | |
| Sunday, 24th March 2019 | |
During this two-day course with award-winning boat builder Colin Henwood, you will learn how to shape a single canoe paddle from Ash using hand tools.
“I can’t think of anything that could have improved a perfect couple of days – I will signing up for another one soon.”
Student on Paddle making course, January 2018.Colin was fantastic; his attention to detail and support ensured we all left with a paddle I think even he was happy with!
Student on Paddle making course, January 2018.
Make your own canoe paddle at the Wood Centre
Cost: £225 per person (materials included)
Venue: Our new purpose-built Education Barn at the Sylva Wood Centre, Oxfordshire, OX14 4QT
Tutor: Colin Henwood
Colin Henwood founded his boatyard, Henwood and Dean Boatbuilders, in 1982 specialising in restoring and building wooden Thames launches. The boatyard received many awards in the UK and abroad, and in 2014 Colin was awarded Maker of the Year by the Heritage Crafts Association. In October 2016 Colin handed the boatyard over to two of his team who are successfully continuing the tradition he began 35 years ago. Not one to retire, Colin has established a workshop at the Sylva Wood Centre where he is currently re-building a 1920 Thames motor canoe.
Colin Henwood with students making a canoe paddle at the Sylva Wood Centre
Paddle course at the Sylva Wood Centre, Jun2018
During this two-day course with award-winning boat builder Colin Henwood, you will learn how to shape a single canoe paddle from Ash using hand tools.
“I can’t think of anything that could have improved a perfect couple of days – I will signing up for another one soon.”
Student on Paddle making course, January 2018.Colin was fantastic; his attention to detail and support ensured we all left with a paddle I think even he was happy with!
Student on Paddle making course, January 2018.
Make your own canoe paddle at the Wood Centre
Cost: £225 per person (materials included)
Venue: Our new purpose-built Education Barn at the Sylva Wood Centre, Oxfordshire, OX14 4QT
Tutor: Colin Henwood
Colin Henwood founded his boatyard, Henwood and Dean Boatbuilders, in 1982 specialising in restoring and building wooden Thames launches. The boatyard received many awards in the UK and abroad, and in 2014 Colin was awarded Maker of the Year by the Heritage Crafts Association. In October 2016 Colin handed the boatyard over to two of his team who are successfully continuing the tradition he began 35 years ago. Not one to retire, Colin has established a workshop at the Sylva Wood Centre where he is currently re-building a 1920 Thames motor canoe.
Colin Henwood with students making a canoe paddle at the Sylva Wood Centre
Paddle course at the Sylva Wood Centre, Jun2018
Sylva Foundation is a charity registered in England and Wales 1128516 and in Scotland SC041892. A non-profit making company limited by guarantee, registered in England No.06589157.
Copyright © Sylva Foundation. All rights reserved.
View details on the website of the Charity Commission for England & Wales
View details on the website of the Scottish Charity Regulator.
View details on the website of the Fundraising Regulator.
Certificate No. IASME-CE-011514
Sylva Foundation, Sylva Wood Centre, Little Wittenham Road, Long Wittenham, Oxfordshire, OX14 4QT
01865 408018 |
info@sylva.org.uk
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