About

Fortingall Ltd was established in 2001 and incorporated in 2017, and is named after the 5,000 year-old yew tree that is in the Kirkyard in Fortingall village, Perthshire, Scotland. I lived near there as a young man and always felt a sense of wonder at such an old thing, in such a beautiful place.

I am a fourth-generation Scottish joiner, apprenticed by my father whilst working with him, my uncles and grandfather. I enjoyed an interesting and varied career working all over the UK, before spending ten years in London and settling in rural Gloucestershire.

I have a one-man workshop here with an adhoc facility in London that I use when I need CNC and specialist industrial machinery.

Preferring to work within a 1.5-hour radius of home, if possible, I do cover the whole of the southern half of England.

Method

My approach is to make things properly so that they last a lifetime. The visible timbers in my work are normally native British deciduous hardwoods that I have hand selected from boules and slabs from specialist sawmills and wood yards. Seeing and touching the timbers up close allows me to pragmatically select for aesthetics and performance.

Slow grown British hardwoods often have amazing charm and character because they come from solitary trees in fields, nestled in hedgerows, beside streams, rivers, and lakes, small stands, or managed mature woodlands. They are the trees we see as we walk our children on a Sunday afternoon, take the dog for a walk before breakfast, jog beside the lake, or see from the train window during our commute. In short, they are the trees that dot our landscape and form part of our national environmental heritage. As the trees grow, instead of shooting straight up to the forest canopy creating long and straight trunks, they twist, contort and adapt to their surroundings which leads to beautiful grain characteristics when used for furniture. These trees have supported an enormously diverse range of wildlife for many hundreds of years before being felled. I honour these grand old trees by using the timber they provide responsibly and with care.

I often use logs from single trees so that the boards have similar tones and characteristics and so the cabinetry/furniture/joinery should age in a harmonious manner although it is surprising how much slabs from the same tree can vary.

I utilise European, North American, African and Asian Tropical hardwoods for a variety of reasons. Sometimes aesthetic, sometimes performance.

When using softwood I tend to use Scandinavian Redwood par (slow grown joinery grade pine) and panel products for structure and function where they will be unseen or painted over.

You can see more of me on YouTube, just click the button below.