STYLE | Art


MEE T T H E MA K E R


Andy Fortune Mulberry Tree Woodturnery


By Jo Macaulay Pictures Timi Eross


Beauty is in decay, for Andy Fortune at the Mulberry tree Woodturnery, because the stunning patterns within the wooden vessels he makes are all the result of fungi or disease attacking the dying wood


Above: Through power to beauty – Andy practises his art


Opposite: Turner and teacher – Andy passes on his woodturning skills to budding artisans


36 styleofwight.co.uk I


ntricate filigrees and patterns follow the contours of his bowls and platters, which are mainly caused by ‘spalting’ – the action of various fungi on the wood after it has been felled and left in the damp.


“I tend to look for wood that contains something of interest, with holes or fissures, with spalting or wood affected by honey fungus,” says Andy.


“Spalting in Ash is probably the most striking, but it’s more prominent in beech. In darker woods it tends not to be too visible.”


One especially colourful Ash bowl at his studio had been turned from “a horrible piece of wood that had been buried under a wood pile,” according to Andy.


“You have to leave the wood long enough in the right conditions to get the patterning, but not too long so that it crumbles,” he adds. “Once it’s dried, it stabilises and you arrest any further decay.”


Andy also stitches vessels with leather thonging or copper wire if they crack during the drying process, after turning. Some of the larger bowls at his studio have huge cracks, but the lacing just adds to their beauty, like the Japanese practice of Wabi Sabi, the appreciation of imperfection, where they mend broken items with gold.


It was Mulberry wood that Andy worked with on his first lathe in 1997, although he’d learnt wood turning back in 1989 in Derbyshire.


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