Making with Wild Materials: On Craft, Connection and Community

Join Embercombe founder Mac Macartney and makers Nick Kary, Ruby Taylor, Elizabeth Crawford and Jessie Watson Brown as we talk about making with wild materials.

For many thousands of years our ancestors had a deep understanding of the materials around them. They developed an intimate relationship with their environment through making. Lives were sustained by the things made by loving hands, together with the earth they crafted beauty and purpose.

In a world of separation we can still find meaning in making and reconnect with the world around us through our hands.

Nick Kary

For nearly four decades Nick has worked to commission making fine, distinctive furniture and cabinets from wood, most of it sourced near his home, in the counties of South West England. During this time, he has been both a teacher and a student; one who is fascinated with the philosophy and practice of craft work of all kinds. Over the last 10 years he has split his time between making, teaching and writing. He is a visiting lecturer at the Schumacher College in Devon and an associate lecturer at Plymouth University. He also runs furniture making workshops at The Brake creative centre in South Devon that he runs with his wife Dolly. They have both been involved with Embercombe since its inception over 20 year ago. His book MATERIAL- Making and the Art of Transformation is his first published work and expresses his love and interest in the relationship between humans and the natural world through our inclination to make.

thebrake.net

Ruby Taylor

Ruby’s practice is materials-led (using clay and plant fibres); concerned with origins and connection and the immersive, sensory experience of making; inspired by the dialogue that emerges between the maker’s hands and the materials. Immersed in the whole cycle of production: harvesting in a sustainable way, processing the raw materials, creating functional and sculptural pieces. Her work is also informed by extended periods of silent contemplative practice in the natural world, and being a team member of an archaeology & museums partnership for a number of years. A trained educator and maker with over 30 years’ experience, Ruby regularly runs courses in Sussex woodland and at UK heritage sites.

Link to a 3-minute film about why she does what she does https://vimeo.com/345381832

Social: @nativehands.uk

Elizabeth Crawford

Elizabeth’s work revolves around plants and our essential human relationships with them. She is a basket maker, working primarily in mixed, locally harvested materials, and has been teaching about and practicing herbal medicine for 7 years. A keen forager and grower, Elizabeth is interested in what the plants have to teach us as well as in their myriad uses as materials, foods and medicines. Through creative, sensory experiences in nature she hopes to inspire others to find belonging on the land and in their bodies within a wild and changing world. She lives in a land based co-operative in South Devon.

Jessie Watson Brown

Jessie is on a path of rewilding, reconnecting, reskilling and remembering. Weaving together a love of making and crafting using natural materials, with immersing herself in the natural world and learning what it might mean to live as a human on this earth. She works running camps, facilitates on various nature-based programmes and in the winter plants thousands of trees. She currently lives in a land-based community on Dartmoor, and feels most at home among the granite and moss.

oakandsmoketannery.co.uk