our new oak mirrors

our new oak full-length mirrors are made up of lots of different pieces of reclaimed oak, different sizes and thicknesses, with some being slightly darker than others and with nice burrs and markings. We select the pieces from off-cuts or pieces too short to use for furniture and they are planed and sanded to fit together perfectly for these mirrors.

if you came to the private view or the first day of The Contemporary Craft Fair at Bovey Tracey you might have seen the first 2 we had made, but they both sold straight away and we hadn't had a chance to photograph them. We have now made another one and taken some images for you to see.

we will be adding them to our collection of accessories on our website soon and will have them for sale at our next event - Welcombe Open Studios 09.

Welcombe Open Studios 09

Our last event of the summer is the much anticipated Welcombe Open Studios 09, now in it's 4th year and with more artists taking part this year than ever before. 9 artists will be opening their studios around our lovely village of Welcombe on the North Devon coast and there will also be 2 mixed exhibitions as part of the event.



This year we have decided to hold the event over 2 weekends: weekend 1 is over 3 days - 7th to 9th August, and weekend 2 is over 4 days - 28th to 31st August. So if you miss the 1st weekend, you have another chance at the end of the month to visit some of the studios. Alot of the artists taking part only open their studios for this event so it's a great chance to get an exclusive peek into where & how their work is created.

The website for the event is http://www.welcombearts.wordpress.com/ and is where you will find all the details you need to find Welcombe and all the studios, open times, artists contact details, etc.

New artists this year include poet & artist John Moat who will be showing collections of his poems, novels, short stories and limited editions, as well as paintings, prints and etchings. Our new neighbour Tom Hyde will have work on display which include his sculptures in wood, prints and silver jewellery. Rick Hall will be opening his studio for the first time as part of the event showing new paintings and work in progress - his beautiful studio is set in a lovely wooded area of Welcombe and is a must see for visitors.

Also new for this year is a mixed exhibition at The Yarner Trust showing work from makers of furniture, paintings & poetry, mosaics, willow & rush baskets and textiles and a creative painting exhibition in the village hall of Rosina Lytton's work and work by her students.

Other studios open are photography by Paul Jenner - paintings, drawings and ceramics by Rebecca Cohen - textiles & paintings by Jean Goodchild - raku & earthenware pottery by David Westcott - oil paintings and watercolours by Wendy Chiles - and contemporary furniture & accessories by us.



We will have furniture on display, mirrors and clocks from reclaimed cornish slate, new oak mirrors, leaf lanterns and gold leaf bowl lanterns, tea-light blocks, ash & oak chopping/serving boards, oak and slate lamps and some 2nd's & old stock at reduced prices. If you are on our postal mailing list you will be getting a detailed leaflet sent to you any day now. If you aren't on our mailing list and would like to be please fill in your details here.

As well as the 11 different studios to visit, Kings Cottage Nursery will be opening their beautiful gardens over the 2 weekends (closed Saturdays) for visitors and plant sales and The Old Smithy Inn will be open for lunch & dinner. There will also be another exhibition in the village hall starting 29th August of Gabrielle Goodchild's beautiful etchings & paintings as part of the Drawn to the Valley open studios event (more details here). And, of course, you must check out the beach at Welcombe Mouth.

Hope to see you in August.
sammy & glenn

welcombe open studios 09, pachadesign, well barn, welcombe, near bideford, devon, ex39 6hg
7th - 9th August and 28th to 31st August 09 - 10.30am to 4.30pm

art trek open studio

update: we will be open til 6pm on saturday 20th june.

we are taking part in this years Art Trek Open Studios, as part of the North Devon Festival, which sees artists all across North Devon opening their studios to visitors for two succsssive weekends. We will be open from 10.30am to 4.30pm on the 19th, 20th & 21st and then again on the 26th, 27th & 28th june.

We will have lots of furniture including our beautiful oak edge & cornish slate dining table and a range of accessories: mirrors from £15, lanterns at £10 & £12.50, clocks from £60, our very popular bread boards from £15 and a couple of pieces of furniture at reduced prices especially for the open studio event.

We live and work in an old converted barn in Welcombe on the coast at the border of North Devon and North Cornwall - Welcombe Mouth beach is just down the track, there are beautiful woodland and coastal walks, and our great local pub, The Old Smithy Inn, is 150 yards from our house, so perfect for lunch or dinner if you come to visit us. Paul Jenner's photography studio will also be open in Welcombe, so don't forget to visit him too.
And Welcombe Pottery is right opposite The Old Smithy Inn, just up the track from us. There will be plenty of signs to find us.

The pub is having a Country Fayre on the 20th with pony rides for kids, a bbq and live music from 3 bands - so come and see us at the studio and then join us at the pub from 6pm.

hope to see you soon, sammy & glenn.

open studio: well barn, well farm, welcombe, near bideford, devon, ex39 6hg
19th, 20th & 21st and 26th, 27th & 28th june - 10.30am to 4.30pm.

the contemporary craft fair

we are busy making work for our next show, The Contemporary Craft Fair at Bovey Tracey. It's on from this friday 5th to sunday 7th of june and showcases 165 of the uk's best designer makers of ceramics, jewellery, furniture, textiles, mixed media, fashion, silver, leather, metal & much more.


as well as being able to buy direct from the makers at the show there will also be workshops & demonstrations, a childrens craft tent & entertainment, masterclasses & lectures, great food and live music!



this year we will be showing our oak edge and cornish slate dining table with benches, so if you have always wanted to see one (or buy one), now is your chance.
the pieces of cornish slate that were cut from the local quarry for us to be used for this table & benches are really beautiful, a deep blue/black colour with streaks of quartz and tiny flecks of fools gold.



we will also be selling new work - beautiful oak mirrors & our oak & ash chopping/serving boards, as well as reclaimed cornish slate mirrors, clocks, our delicate leaf lanterns and more.

we hope to see you at the show.

the contemporary craft fair, mill marsh park, bovey tracey, devon
5th - 7th june open daily 10am to 5pm
www.craftsatboveytracey.co.uk

our materials: steel

steel:
reclaimed rusty steel might not be the first material that springs to mind when you think of contemporary furniture (or any indoor furniture for that matter) but we tend to use it in our designs quite alot. we have always found inspiration from waste materials, and metal that has been discarded and left to go rusty has beautiful qualities to it.
the bright oranges and deep browns of rust compliment oak so well.
the pieces that we use are either flat plates that come from shipyards or unusual shaped pieces that we sometimes use for handles on furniture.
sometimes they are bolted with huge rusty nails to old blocks of oak and they are really difficult to remove without them bending out of shape, so we quite often have to bash them back into shape. Then we remove the excess rust, clean them up & treat the metal with a sealant so there is no further rust.





as well as that contrast of rusty steel with oak, we also love the way that new stainless steel or powder-coated steel compliments old oak too.
shiny industrial stainless steel or powder-coated black steel in perfectly straight pieces or box sections work so well with the narly old reclaimed oak that we use on our coffee tables.
our reclaimed rusty steel is often used as the sides & handles of our console tables and, when we very rarely find longer pieces of flat steel, we use them to wrap around the sides & top of our oak sideboards.






next: new cornish slate

images: top left: stainless steel & oak coffee table top right: rusty steel & oak sideboard bottom left: low steel & oak coffee table bottom right: rusty steel & oak console table with drawer

sofas

our new kitchen floor is painted at last and we are slowly but surely putting everything back in there and building new cupboards and shelving for it. It won't be finished for a while yet as we have so much coming up in June (2 shows and 2 open studios - more details very soon) so the next 3 weeks will be taken up with making new work to show you at the summer events.
In the meantime we have been dreaming about maybe having a sofa in our kitchen in front of our lovely woodburner - here are some of our favourites.



hepburn sofa by matthew hilton


kashan by philipp mainzer for e15



loft sofa by baileys



divine recline long banquette by ochre




chaise-longue by pachadesign

the chaise-longue above is by us. we designed it for a commission based on a sofa that we had already designed & made for our living room. the base has storage space for bed linen or pillows and is on castors so it can be easily moved about. there are more images on the commissions page on our website.

the sofa decision will have to wait for a little while, knowing us we will probably design & make something new - we'll let you know.

our materials: reclaimed oak

we thought we would tell you a little more about the materials that we use for our furniture & accessories. They are a huge part of what we do and picking the right piece of wood or slate or metal for each piece that we design is very important to us.

reclaimed oak:
sometimes we take forever looking through old oak joists, dock blocks, old floorboards & old fence posts to choose the best bits to buy, which isn't always easy as the oak isn't beautifully clean, straight, sanded pieces when we first find them. They are weathered, dirty and very dark, so it's only until we start to work with them that the warm colour underneath is revealed. We try not to change them too much (we obviously clean them up quite a bit) but it is the decay and rawness and imperfections that we love.
our reclaimed oak is salvaged from local shipyards, skips, farmyards, building sites & our local tip.



we use reclaimed oak in our designs for coffee tables, dining tables, benches, and console tables, as well as tea-light blocks and mirrors (look out for our new reclaimed oak mirror design on the website soon).
the reclaimed oak on our furniture is finished with an eco hard wax oil that protects & seals it but doesn't change the look and feel of it and keeps it to a matt finish.



next: reclaimed cornish slate

images: top left: low steel and oak coffee table top right: oak edge & slate dining table with benches bottom left: square oak coffee table bottom right: off-set oak console table

our off-set oak console table

another new piece on our website - our off-set reclaimed oak console table.
we had been saving this reclaimed oak board used for the top for ages as we wanted to use it for a really simple piece - it has such beautiful markings, a long scar in the oak runs along the middle of the board.
all the reclaimed oak boards that we use are lovely but this piece is particularly nice.
we have kept the base as simple as possible.

our rusty steel & oak sideboard

another one of our new pieces that we have recently added to our furniture page on our website - the reclaimed rusty steel that we use to clad the top and sides of the sideboard is protected with a sealant so it won't rust any further.
we don't find long pieces of reclaimed rusty steel very often - at the moment we have one other piece that is a little longer but not quite as deep, so this sideboard is pretty much a one-off.
there is an image of the back of the sideboard on the website too (it's just as beautiful as the front).

new furniture

new furniture on our website - click on the image

our spring open studio

we thought we would show you some images from our spring open studio - the space is usually our workshop but we take everything out and turn it into a little showroom for while the open studio is on.

thanks to everyone that came to see us in Welcombe and for visiting the other studios aswell. The spring open studios were successful for all of us so we will probably do it again next Easter and hopefully get some of the other artists in Welcombe involved too.

If you didn't get a chance to visit us this time we will be having another open studio in June (open for 10 days) and again in August for the Welcombe open studios - details soon.

love factor

thankyou to everyone that came to the love factor exhibition in Appledore over the Easter weekend - it was a great success and all the makers involved had lovely feedback from visitors.
we had organised the exhibition between the five of us and had great support from Sandy Brown who kindly let us use the Glove Factory for the show.
our work looked perfect in the beautiful white space with her colourful ceramics and paintings interspersed here and there.
thankyou Sandy for all your advice and support and thankyou also to Mr & Mrs Cannon of The Portledge Estate for sponsoring the exhibition.

images of the new work we made for the exhibition will be on our website soon.
for details of all the furniture makers involved please visit
http://www.lovefactor.wordpress.com/
and for Sandy's details visit her website at
http://www.sandybrownarts.com/

spring open studio: 15th - 19th april '09

hopefully we will see you all at the love factor furniture exhibition in Appledore this weekend but if you can't make it then maybe we will see you at our spring open studio.

for the rest of the Easter week we will be opening our studio in Welcombe where we will have a selection of work for sale: new furniture & accessories, our usual range of mirrors, clocks and lanterns and some old stock at reduced prices (see below for details).

we will have our last old stock coffee table for sale at the spring open studio.
the table is the same as the one above apart from the slate not being the new cornish slate that we now use.
the oak is reclaimed and finished with danish oil and the slate is protected with a sealant to protect against stains.
length: 90cm x width: 90cm x height: 43cm
the table is reduced from £750 to £500.


new gold leaf bowl lanterns will be available from the studio at £10 each - not available from our website yet.
also for sale will be our leaf skeleton lanterns at £12.50 each, available in little boxes perfect for posting as gifts.

we still have a few old stock mirrors made from dark slate left, in a few different sizes ranging from small ones reduced from £25 to £15, medium ones reduced from £35 to £20 and these large square mirrors that are perfect for bathrooms.
they are 60cm x 60cm and are reduced from £200 to £120.

a brand new product that we have made especially for the spring open studio are these beautiful serving/chopping boards made from reclaimed oak & ash starting at £10.

also available will be our usual collection of mirrors and clocks from reclaimed cornish slate - mirrors start at £30 and clocks at £60.

we will also have a range of furniture on show including new pieces for 2009.

as well as our studio, Paul Jenner will be opening his photography studio selling beautiful box canvases, prints & cards. David Westcott produces a wide range of functional earthenware at Welcombe Pottery and will also be open for the 5 days. The Old Smithy Inn will be open for lunch from 12 to 2.30 serving great food, good wine & real ales.
Welcombe lies on the coast inbetween Bideford and Bude, just off the A39 - all studios will be signposted.

hope to see you this Easter.

pachadesign open studio:
well barn, well farm, welcombe, near bideford, devon, ex39 6hg
open: 15th - 19th april '09 10.30am - 5pm

love factor april 09

a new exhibition that we are taking part in showcasing fresh work from a group of designer/makers all based in north devon/cornwall -
christian o'reilly, pachadesign, sam walsh and paul anderson.

dramatic pieces of contemporary furniture interspersed with sandy brown's lusty ceramic sculptures & paintings at her studio in appledore.

a tantalising, upbeat exhibition by five makers who are "passionate about wood and the creative process; and, hey, it's spring, the love factor is in the air ...... we hope to see you at the Glove Factory this Easter."

10th - 13th april 09
the old glove factory: newquay street, appledore, devon, ex39 1lu
open: 10.30am to 4pm daily
for more info: http://www.lovefactor.wordpress.com/