As the endless list of jobs slowly dwindles, a workshop is starting to emerge.

There is still a way to go, but the atmosphere is beginning to settle and it no longer feels only like a building site in here.

There are still new doors to make, the outside of the building and façade needs attention, and a good deal more besides, but we are approaching an important threshold. Once the machines are fully functional in the next week or so, work in the space can properly return to commissions again, even if that continues alongside the work of finishing the workshop.

In the previous journal entry, I wrote about the broader ambition behind this move. The hope was not simply to find a larger workshop, but to create a space that could gradually become home to a small number of other makers whose work sits cohesively alongside each other and where the making of work and can exist in the same place that it can be displayed.

Now that the workshop is beginning to function more properly, it feels like the right moment to introduce the first of the makers who will be joining me here later this month.

Filippo Muzi Falconi makes sculptural work that sits somewhere between art, design and natural artefact. Much of his practice centres around materials that he forages himself, from wood to wild clay and pigments. The work often carries a slightly archaic or ritual quality, drawing on ideas from biology, mythology and the wider natural world.

What I particularly admire in Filippo’s work is the seriousness of his relationship with materials. There is a sense that the objects emerge from a direct engagement with the landscape and the substances themselves.

**Steamed Milk Stool** by Lewis Duckworth

Lewis Duckworth makes work that is rooted in process, material behaviour and construction. Across his furniture and objects there is a clear interest in pushing timber into unusual territory, whether through splitting, bending, laminating or stripping back surfaces to reveal what sits beneath. There is a real curiosity in the work, but also a strong sense of craft and materiality.

I am still keen to hear from other makers working in wood who feel their work might fit in the workshop as it continues to develop.

Settling In

The Grand Plan & Open Call