Artisans of Dartmoor - Book - Page 98
ABOVE: Ambrose shapes a leg
for a bar stool on his shave
horse, with the family dog,
Gerty, for company.
RIGHT: Plentiful supplies of
firewood, gathered from his
family’s 200-acre woodland,
keeps Ambrose warm in his
Ashburton workshop.
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the story of its creation – the result is a triumphant blend of the
traditional and the dead cool.
Ambrose has an intuitive understanding of woodcraft, a skill he
honed during a childhood in which he was allowed to play freely
in his family’s 20-acre woodland. “My parents were very trusting
and didn’t think twice about letting me use a penknife,” he says.
“My friends and I spent our days making bows and arrows,
whittling spoons, and building elaborate dens.”
By his teens, Ambrose had graduated to making rustic stools,
and this early enthusiasm caught the eye of a local woodworker,
Fred Salmons, who took Ambrose under his wing and taught him
traditional furniture-making techniques, including steam-bending
and spoke-shaving. “When Fred retired, he passed some of his
tools on to me,” says Ambrose, who still uses many of Fred’s old
drawknives, planes and gouges, which are now over a century old.
“Hand tools are slow, but there’s no way I could produce the same
effect with a machine. They create the kind of tactile finishes you
want to reach out and stroke.”
The Woodworker • Ambrose Vevers
