Stuart King

Craftsman, artist, woodturner, and photojournalist

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Stuart King

Craftsman, artist, woodturner & photojournalist

I was born in the Buckinghamshire village of Holmer Green in 1942, and played as a child in the local Beech woods. The countryside and the trades and traditions of those that shaped it over centuries have always fascinated me and influenced my work. I have spent a lifetime researching, recording and collecting anything about the rural past and today am a well-known artist craftsman, demonstrator, international lecturer and photo-journalist.

I built an Automaton

An automaton can amuse and entertain using the simplest of mechanical technology and can be made by anyone using basic woodworking skills.

Wild wood Archaeology

The Wildwood is still giving up its secrets, albeit slowly. Exploration started rather late due to a wet spring but continued well into the autumn with each carefully dug and recorded trench revealing a little more of life from prehistory to the medieval period.

Beech Nuts in the wild

Most folk wouldn’t recognise a beech flower. Those that remain on the trees are maturing into distinctive triangular beech nuts.

The Speckled Wood Butterfly

This has been a fantastic year for the Speckled Wood butterfly. There has been fierce competition for the shafts of sunlight that our 2013 summer has provided in abundance.

Hidden Wildwood Camera

In one corner of the Wildwood is a pheasant feeder. To monitor the effectiveness I acquired an infrared motion activated camera to observe what really happens both in the daytime and at night, and I have been delighted with the first two 24 hour sequences. Amongst the visitors were badgers, muntjack deer, fox, squirrels, a rabbit, rook and jay… but no pheasants.

Mary Rose — making a sailor’s boxwood hair comb

I recently visited the new Mary Rose museum at Portsmouth. What a fantastic job they have done. I was so taken by the sailor’s boxwood hair combs that it was straight to the workshop to make a couple of examples.