Guy And The Team
I originally trained as a cabinetmaker at Parnham House/The John Makepeace school for craftsmen in wood. After an apprenticeship in David Fields' workshop in London, I went on to the Royal College of Art to study furniture design. With that basis and those professional qualifications (I can put MA, RCA and MCSD after my name!), I've since spent many years working as a cabinet- maker and furniture designer, with a wide range of corporate and private clients. (There are some examples in the 'portfolio' section on this site.)
Over the years I've founded and managed On-The-Line Design, a multidisciplinary design consultancy in Chelsea Harbour, and then Guy Mallinson Furniture. This developed to become Mallinson Ltd, specialising in custom design and cabinetmaking for private and corporate clients. The workshop grew to sixteen cabinetmakers in a well equipped workshop in Fulham, taking on large-scale contemporary commissions.
From 2000 to mid-2004, Mallinson Ltd was heavily involved in the development of new wood bending technologies - work which included the manufacture and processing of Bendywood® and Thermaflex® as well as design consultancy and prototyping services for projects using these products.
The LABAN project was the first major public installation using Bendywood®; the architects were Herzog & De Meuron, with manufacture, design and development by Mallinson Ltd. In 2003 Herzog & De Meuron won the Stirling Prize for their work on LABAN, and in the same year, Mallinson Ltd won the FX International Interior Design Award for Best Public Space Installation for the project.
During that time I also took the decision to re-locate to West Dorest and a new working environment surrounded by woodland. What's more, throughout the years, I've always enjoyed teaching. Back in Fulham days I ran evening classes teaching cabinetmaking, which proved popular with both men and women from all walks of life. With the move to Dorset came the opportunity to teach again, but this time in a wonderful setting and focussing on techniques that matched my surroundings.
My work on artificial wood bending methods rekindled my interest in traditional green woodworking craftsmanship, in many ways the natural equivalent of the hi-tech methods I'd been helping to pioneer. (My first experience of green woodworking was back when I was studying at Parnham House, when I carved my first green wood bowl.) What's more, working in woodland reminded me of just how wonderfully sustainable a resource wood can be.
Throughout my years of cabinetmaking in London I'd been working with timber that had been felled, transported to a sawmill, sawn into planks, moved to timber stacks for years of drying, transported to timber stock holders, transported again to our workshops and then cut up into components, with the wastage (up to 50%) just discarded or burned. Nowadays, timber no longer arrives on a big lorry coming up the King's Road! Instead, I can see the process through from the thinning and sustainable management of woodland to making a wooden product, with no transportation or wastage.
And that's where I am now. I do still accept occasional commissions in between running course but my emphasis is very much on teaching green woodworking here in the woods in West Dorset. I also have the invaluable help of local and specialist crafts-people - Mace Brightwater, Guy Furner, Karen Hansen, Veronica Hudson, Malcolm Seal, and James Verner.
Mace Brightwater
From a forestry and landscaping background, Mace pursued his passion for trees, training in Arboriculture and Tree Surgery at Merrist Wood College. After running his own successful tree surgery business, Greenman Treecare, for six years. Greenman was sold in order to extend and develop his skills in sustainable, ecological woodland management and related activities. Further training and qualifications in Coppicing, Hedge Laying and Green Woodwork gained at the Greenwood Centre, Coalbrookdale, led to a mini-apprenticeship with Mike Abbot, green woodworker and master chair-maker, helping Mace to develop and refine his green woodwork, pole lathe and chair making skills.
Mace now pursues a traditional seasonal woodland livelihood; working the woods and hedge laying over the winter season; a craftsman utilizing the fruits of his labour in the summer months, creating turned items, chairs and yurts.
As a professional green woodwork tutor and demonstrator Mace actively encourages others to share in the therapeutic joys of the tree-to-product process on a year-round basis.
James Verner
James is a well known, locally based designer and cabinetmaker who brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to the groups. Along with his small team of crafts-people, James creates furniture for private and corporate clients worldwide.
After gaining an Honours Degree at St Andrews University and then completing a cabinet maker's apprenticeship, James established his studio in 1996. Working almost exclusively in native English hardwoods from sustainable sources, James' furniture is characterised by its sculptural forms, his intuitive use of the grain patterns of solid timber to create stimulating decorative effects and - increasingly - a sense of place, rooted in the Jurassic Coastline of West Dorset where he was bought up. A founder member of the Dorset Visual Arts Trust, James is committed to setting his own work, and that of other visual artists, in an international context.
Karen Hansen
Born in Denmark, Karen has lived in the South West of England since 1985, where she runs a successful business in furniture design and sculptural construction. Starting her woodworking career as a site-carpenter in construction with work in both Europe and America, she later moved into workshop based joinery and cabinet-making. She has extensive experience in conservation joinery and carving, gaining a scholarship through the Prince's Foundation, and her work can be seen in places such as Hampton Court Palace and Windsor Castle.
To develop a more contemporary approach to her work, Karen spent two years studying Forest Product Technology, design and manufacture at Hooke Park College in Dorset, where she specialised in small roundwood and coppice material. It was here she had the freedom to develop her creative design abilities which, since 1994, have led to work in product design and development and forms the basis for her business today, taking on commissions for both public and private clients.
Karen's design ideas combine costumer needs with an understanding of the natural material, and are worked through with a clear emphasise on clean lines and comfortable function. She has a broad experience of running workshops and setting up teaching programmes for both adults and children and has worked on a wide range of creative projects involving local community groups. With her family, she has built their sustainable oak-timberframe home and straw bale workshops.
Malcolm Seal
Malcolm Seal has been basket making for nearly twenty years and has gained a reputation for his skill as a maker and the quality of his work. His other experience covers agriculture, horticulture, forestry and conservation work for both private clients and organisations. Most recently he has worked at the River Cottage H.Q where he was Gardens Director and designed and built a series of gardens and landscapes.
After an Art School training Malcolm apprenticed himself to Jack West, one of the last of a generation of workshop trained basket makers. In 1988 Malcolm set up his basket making business and planted his first willow bed. His work ranges from the domestic to the sculptural and has been seen in a variety of contexts from kitchens to cathedrals to contemporary art galleries. Customers include individuals, interior and garden designers, prop buyers from film and television and collectors. Commissions include work for the BBC, Channel 4, Liberties and Terrance Conran. He sells his baskets locally at markets, nationally through exhibitions and direct from his workshop.
His work has been covered by a variety of media including 'World of Interiors', 'Country Life', 'Harpers and Queen', 'The Independent', Channel 4 and the BBC.
Malcolm has a wealth of teaching experience and has taught for Plymouth University, the Architects Association, the 'English gardening school' at the Chelsea physic garden and at Sarah Ravens 'cutting garden'.
Veronica Hudson
Veronica has been a practising artist for the past thirty years, working in a large range of mediums, etching, printmaking, charcoal, oil and acrylic. She has exhibited extensively across the country, in London and abroad; her most recent exhibition in Beaminster showing her charcoal and oil semi abstract landscapes and large charcoal drawings of wild grasses and seeds.
While continuing as a practising, artist she ran highly successful courses in London during the 80s, in murals and special effects for interiors where the students decorated actual houses. She then moved on to travel around the world teaching these techniques, during which time she continued her own work - exhibiting in many London galleries and running workshops.
Moving out of London, she became interested in working in the elements, in her view drawing on the energy and light of the surroundings. She lived at the time in the Welsh marches, where she developed techniques for large charcoal drawings of the hills, her interest being to capture the immense atmosphere and contrast of light to dark which lends itself so well to charcoal.
Veronica spent a year in northern Ghana, West Africa, learning the traditional hand building techniques of pottery, which led to her returning to run many workshops over the past fifteen years in both pottery and charcoal drawing and making.
This wealth of experience has culminated in producing the unique courses she runs with us, which highlight her belief that it is so much more inspirational and exciting to not only make your own drawing materials but also to immerse yourself in the elements you are drawing. The opportunity to spend two days undisturbed in the woods will be an unforgettable creative experience.
Guy Furner
Guy been working in the woods since the age of fifteen, only leaving that environment to take a degree in landscape design. Guy served his apprenticeship with several old timers that have links to the memories of the working woods, describing times when woodlands were alive with man, boy and horse.
Since then Guy has travelled across southern England living and working in a variety of woodlands: from isolated islands of parcel woodland in Suffolk, prime coppice in Sussex, harsh winters on the Salisbury planes, to wetland woods on the Somerset levels. Guy has always earned a living form the woods and has picked up a wide range of greenwood skills as well as experiencing life in the woods.
In 2007 Guy bought a small parcel of Dorset woodland to develop his dream of a woodland farm, based of the principles of agroforestry.
Adam Hendley
Adam Hendley began his journey into the world of Bushcraft at an early age. He was born in Denmark in 1987 but spent most of his childhood in the hills of Dorset. An avid wildlife enthusiast and all round wild child, he began to develop a great set of wilderness skills, exploring the hills with his trusty wellies and penknife.
Throughout his childhood he travelled with his parents to many meditation and retreat centers, which helped him grow a strong set of people skills and his calm, grounded approach to teaching. He has always been keen to share and pass on his skills, to inspire people to live a more adventurous, creative life. He grew up around a lot of children and enjoyed running games and activities for them.
Traveling after his A levels he spent time on the Thai-Burmese border with a Karen tribe, studying their skills and life style which he found inspirational. When he returned to the England he became an apprentice to a new survival school in Dorset where he spent the next two years teaching persistent offenders and children out of school, running remote area survival outings, together with the Dorset police. During this time they also ran an after-school and weekend Survival and Mountain bike club. He found the work with all the children tremendously rewarding, but wanted to teach primitive skills in more depth.
This led to more training with Tom Brown Jr at the Tracker School. He volunteered and participated in the Standard and Advanced Fire Making, the Art of Story Telling, and the Power of the Sweat Lodge. During this time Adam's Bushcraft skills grew rapidly. He was asked to instruct at one of Tom Brown's non profit organisations, 'The Children of the Earth Foundation', whose focus was reconnecting children back to the earth and reawakening their senses.
Here he taught advanced Bushcraft Skills, Fire Friction Methods, Shelter Building, Awareness Games, Basic Tracking, Camouflage, Coal Burnt Bowls, Primitive Hunting Methods, Hide Tanning and even more games.
He participated in the six month Hunter Gatherer Intensive at Practical Primitive in New Jersey, with Bushcraft expert and mentor Eddie Starnater, learning advance Bushcraft techniques from the traditions of our hunter gatherer ancestors. Additionally he took part in and taught basket quivers, pack baskets, survival 101, shelter building, primitive pottery, advanced fire, and many others. Eddie's calm, practical approach to teaching and way of promoting learning through experimentation inspired Adam and helped form his teaching style.
Now settled in Dorset, Adam is enthusiastic to share his Bushcraft skills. He teaches clearly and practically, and his calm patient attitude enables people to feel safe and secure in their environment.
Ben Orford
Ben has been green woodworking and and tool making for over ten years now. Having spent three years training with some of the leading green woodworkers in the country (Mike Abbott and Gudrun Leitz) at Clissett Wood in Herefordshire and undertaken a cabinet making course at Hereford College, he has gained the necessary skills to provide thorough training courses in green wood crafts.
He lives in his home county of Herefordshire where he runs a green wood craft, tool making and leatherwork business with his wife, Lois. In his spare time he loves to whittle and make knives - his two great passions.
