Arwen Dresser
In 2021, Storm Arwen caused the loss of over 100,000 trees across Haddo Estate, Aberdeenshire. Grounded in material provenance, this project reframes this fallen timber as a record of landscape transformation and use, as oppose to biomass.
The outcome is a fully resolved chest of drawers using storm-felled spalted British beech, requiring the integration of multiple components, structural considerations, and advanced cabinetry techniques.
Material testing and prototyping informed key decisions around joinery, proportion, and finish, allowing the timber’s natural grain, spalting, and growth rings to be intentionally expressed as integral elements of the design.
Harvest Shelves
Processes of urbanisation and globalisation have contributed to an increasing disconnection from food systems, heritage landscapes, seasonal rhythms, and forms of climate resilience rooted in rural practice. This project investigates how design can reconnect contemporary users with these traditions of harvest, foraging, and land-based knowledge.
The outcome is a compact, modular kitchen shelving unit, primarily constructed from Scots elm, with an integrated removable trug for foraging, made from locally sourced apple wood. The trug draws on traditional West Country basket forms, translating vernacular craft into a contemporary furniture context.
Informed by pagan rituals such as Wassailing and Twelfth Night, the design centres acts of gratitude toward the orchard and acknowledges the cultural significance of fruit-bearing trees.
The fabrication process involved complex compound mitre cuts, precise joinery, and carefully sequenced construction to ensure both structural integrity and functional cohesion.
Disorderly Dinners:
Half Plates
with The Chancery Rosewood, Zaccaria Slater and University of Arts London
Surrealist dinner plates created for an intentionally disorderly dinner party, where a select group of diners experienced a six-course meal, curated by Zaccaria Slater, at The Chancery Rosewood’s Elizabeth House Suite.
The Half Plates were served with half a quail on a bed of chickpeas with green sauce, translating a narrative around portion sizes and the shared dynamics of ‘small plates’ dining.
Local Clay
Hand
Building Workshop
The Local Clay workshop was an introduction to hand-building techhniques designed for and delivered at WORKSHOP WORKSHOP - a Creative Festival facilitating knowledge exchange and access to creative learning in rural areas, through participatory workshops held outdoors in a small town in Northamptonshire.
Using locally foraged clay to enable dialogue around material provenance and place-based practice; the workshop invited participants to collectively produce ceramic forms informed by British wildflowers, Using making as a method to cultivate attentiveness to local ecological systems and to revalue native botanical knowledge.
OffBeat Folk Film Awards
OffBeat began in 2022 by Mike Hankin and Rita Conry sharing overlooked archive films about folk, heritage, and working life in the UK.
Today, their work continues to celebrate and connect the culture, art, and stories of everyday people. The film festival is dedicated to folk culture in Britain, a week of sold-out screenings, events, and music featuring 48 contemporary films made by people across the country.
For the 2026 fesitval, I designed and made the awards to reminisce standing stones, using spalted Scottish Beech wood to make columns that rest on plinths of London clay, imprinted with the titles of the awards.
OffBeat Folk Film Awards
For the 2025 OffBeat British Folk Film Fesitval, I designed and made the awards to reminisce megalithic hag stones, using speckled stoneware clay to mimic weathered rock.