Robert Race has been making wooden objects for nearly thirty years, starting with dolls’ houses and miniature furniture. He also made some moving toys for children, but these gradually developed into moving objects intended for adults and automata which incorporated simple mechanisms. ‘I was interested in developing toy mechanisms to produce things that move in simple, but interesting ways’, he says.
Fred Baier calls himself a furniture artist rather than a craftsman, although craftsmanship plays an important role in the creation of his unusual, highly contemporary-style pieces. His furniture is often complex and visually challenging and Baier explains, ‘ In everything I make there are all sorts of different layers – imagery, narrative, structure and use.’ He adds, ‘My pieces are intended as pioneering furniture statements rather than products.’
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Horticulturalist Angela Morley works as a garden designer and also makes sculptures from willow and other natural materials. Both strands of her work are informed by her great affinity to nature and her delight in the potential beauty of everything in the natural world from fungi and mosses to feathers and seedpods. She says, ‘As a child I spent most of my time wandering the meadows and woods in awe of all the wild plants and as an adult I am still happiest outside. My love of nature is my greatest inspiration’.