Kaiikanui Road
R.D.1 Hikurangi
Northland
New Zealand

Phone/Fax: 64-09-4338950

I was born in Lower Hutt in 1960 and moved to Northland in 1986 while working for Telecom as a radio technician. I started turning full time in 1990. My home is on a 100-acre block 30km Northeast of Whangarei.

I have always felt a natural affinity with wood and after 12 years as a radio technician I felt the need to do something more creative with my life.

Originally I was drawn towards free-form furniture and as our bush block is littered with deadfall timber, the leftovers from the Kauri logging days, I had the perfect materials to work with. However with the 1990 economy very depressed there was a limited market for original hand-crafted furniture.

Fortunately, at that time I met a group of woodturners who showed me there is more to woodturning than salad bowls and chair legs. So I decided to give it a go!

I have since realized that there are endless creative possibilities to lathe work and I feel that I could quite happily spend the rest of my life exploring them.

I am mainly self-taught with a lot of advice and inspiration from many other woodturners. In my first four years of turning my emphasis was on using very decorative timber and applying simple form so as not to overshadow the natural beauty of the timber. While this is still a dominant factor in some of my work I now spend more time on creating pieces where my design is the dominant factor and using timber sympathetic with the design. Major influences in my designs come from my natural surroundings, dreams and life experiences.

For more about my ITE work, follow the link!

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