Barn the Spoon (Barnaby Carder)
Having been obsessed with woodwork since the age of 12, and
spending his teens turning bowls, making wooden jewellry and
abstract sculpture, Barn ended up doing a woodland based chair
making apprenticeship, followed by three years travelling around
the country, living in the woods making and peddling hand-carved
wooden spoons on the streets of the Britains towns & cities. In
2012 Barn opened his notorious East-London spoon shop.
In 2017 Penguin published Barn's first book Spon, which sets out
his vision of functional sculpture through 16 different styles of
spoons
A respected leader in the craft, Barn teaches both in the UK and
Internationally. The resurgence in spoon carving over the last
decade has been widely attributed to his work popularising the
craft.
Approach to teaching:
I aim to teach safe and efficient techniques not just focused on
the product during the class but to provide participents with a
strong foundation enabling them to continue their learning at
home.
What inspires my own work?
For me each spoon I craft is akin to a performance of a song - the
dance of axes and knives and the character of the wood itself are
captured in three dimensions as a performance, then spoons as
sculptures go off into the world to communicate my own attempts at
making sense of the nature of things. And if that communication
fails then at least someone can stir the food in their pan and
transport it from bowls to mouths.
"No one in Britain knows more about crafting a spoon from
green wood than Barn The Spoon" -
The Guardian
