Hands On With Wood…
A Turn of the Future
This worked great! So we did it again this Christmas. I wanted my gift this year to be something locally crafted, beautiful and useful so I started looking at some of the fabulous wood crafts that many of our local artisans produce.
I’ve given hand turned bowls as wedding gifts on several occasions, which were always enthusiastically received… a hand crafted gift definitely has more charisma than a toaster oven!
The Perth-Andover Arts and Crafts Centre always has a lovely selection of wood works crafted by a number of local artisans, but I didn’t see what I had in mind on display when I dropped in just before Christmas. As I was describing what I looking for to Terrie at the A&C Centre…a perfect bowl….I learned that artisan Randy Hathaway lives right in Rowena AND has built a lighthouse on the Tobique River!
To get to his place, Randy instructed me, you turn onto Pokiok Lane and then turn right on Ragged Ass Road. Seriously? This just seemed too funny to be an official New Brunswick sign….DTI and the government are notoriously humourless in my opinion!
As it turns out, it is indeed a real road sign, only it’s from a road in Yellowknife which is famous…. more about that in the Roadside Attractions article…
In the meantime, I pulled in and met Randy in his garage, which, I gotta tell you, has to be the cleanest and most beautiful garage I have ever seen! It is paneled with varnished pine that Randy had left over from his house, and how can anyone have a garage that looks like a ballroom without even one grease spot? But I digress…
Randy’s shop, A Turn of the Future, is housed in another outbuilding where he does all his wood turning. We went downstairs into a bright and beautiful room overlooking the Tobique River that was filled with lovely pieces Randy has crafted from a variety of local woods.
Randy grew Christmas trees for a number of years before getting out of it, but he still wanted to work with wood so he began turning wood on a lathe as a hobby in 2002. He soon realized he needed to learn more about the craft to do the kind of work he envisioned. He contacted Maurice Gamblin, who is a master turner of wood, and ended up taking a 2 day workshop with Maurice. Randy says he learned more from Maurice in that 2 days than he’d learned in a year working on his own.
I was a little overwhelmed by the choices on display, but I eventually chose a very pretty bowl made of black ash. Although it was a simple bowl, the grain and texture of the ash was stunning. And, it was a hot item at our Yankee Swap!
Now that I had a gift, I wanted to know about the lighthouse. Randy built this working lighthouse on the Tobique in 2005. He told me he was inspired to make it after some friends, who were on a boat out on the river one dark and foggy night, couldn’t find Randy’s home!
He used cedar shake for the exterior, and recycled an eclectic collection of old doors and windows as he put it together. The result is a 3 storey lighthouse with personality….no pre-fab stuff here… that is also a little club house complete with its own bar!
Randy specializes in one of a kind pieces in a variety of local woods, making smooth or burl bowls and vases, and cribbage boards. Look for his work at the Arts and Crafts Centre in Perth-Andover, or contact him at A Turn of the Future at 273-3420.
