Hello and welcome to our May blog! We had a great May here at the makers mill, lots of workshops going on including pottery throwing on the wheel with Marianne Lusby, Stained glass Succulents with North Lakes Stained Glass and...
My name is Luke Harding and I design and make furniture under my company name ‘MOS Bespoke Furniture’. I trained as a cabinet maker and have been doing just that for the last 12 years for one simple reason – im obsessed with furniture!
I can witter on about woodwork for far longer than anyone wants to listen so we’ll see how long this text goes on for….
I remember getting my first woodwork tools when I was a child, maybe about 8-9 years old. I’m not talking about ‘toy tools’ here: They were proper ‘miniature tools. I had a ‘proper saw’ – capable of cutting wood, and a ‘proper hammer’ – capable of driving in a nail etc. etc. And they all had wooden handles painted in blue paint (my brother had a matching red set). I would ask my parents to buy me a little pack of multiple sized bits of balsa wood every time we went to the market and then make ‘amazing things’ on the garden bench. This probably meant I made odd little lumps of glued and nailed together lengths of timber, but I loved it.
The next major woodwork memory I have came at about 14 years old when a neighbour, who was a retired joiner himself, lent me some of his old woodwork books from his college days, and explained for the first time to me about ‘woodwork joints’ – by which I mean ‘Mortice and Tennon’s’ and ‘Dovetails’ etc. I.e. joining wood together in traditional ways as oppose to the nailing or screwing the young me was currently doing. I remember this being a complete revelation to me and suddenly my mind was racing with new woodwork possibilities. This has pretty much been my state of mind ever since – if I have a spare moment ill sit there, stare into space, and design furniture in my head! The neighbour later gave me these old leather bound woodwork encyclopaedia’s when I was in my 20’s, they now sit proudly on the first piece of furniture (a bookcase) I ever made under the name ‘MOS Bespoke Furniture’
Anyway, that’s enough of the trip down memory lane – I am immensely excited about the opening of ‘The Makers Mill’. My workshop/studio here is by far the nicest set up I have ever had and I can’t wait to make some beautiful furniture in it. It’s going to be a great experience to work within a building that is so full of talented makers and their work, where we can bounce ideas and opinions off each other.
I like to use local native timber in my designs and always like to work some bright colour into my work when possible (or the client lets me). I think it contrasts and brings out the richness of the timbers grain. The vast majority of my furniture is one off pieces made by commission, direct for private clients. I like the process of working with customers from initial meeting and design ideas, all the way through to delivering a finished item of furniture to them.
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