01/11/2012

Large Wooden Pebbles by Joel Sayre

Some fantastic wooden pebbles that I came across earlier made by Joel Sayre. They reminded me of two of my favourite woodworkers, one named Alma Allen and the other being Ed Moulthrop, the so called ‘father of modern wood turning’. Possibly Alma because of the shape and lovely finish, and maybe Ed because of the woods that Joel tends to use, which is quite a variety to be honest. The pebble above is made out of a monkey puzzle tree (real name Araucaria araucana), which is native to central and southern Chile and western Argentina. Wood from the monkey puzzle tree has beautiful rings and grain which, as you can see in the above photograph, produces quite dramatic and bold patterns.

All of the wood that Joel uses for his sculptures comes from the trees salvaged in his local area of Seattle, it’s interesting to read on his bio that he travels all over the place in an old red pickup collecting wood to bring back to his shop. Often it sits and dries for a long time, sometimes years, before he is able to work on it. Actually, I’d urge you to go and read his bio on his website where he sheds some light on his work, and also the natural element regarding the making of wooden pebbles. I can imagine these are extremely hard to produce and quite labour intensive, all of them are made using hand held power tools and can take days or even weeks depending on the size.

What I personally found quite amazing was the fact that these could be doubled as seats or stools, take for example the one above or even the one below, both are perfect in size and could quite easily be used as seating, maybe even a table. I also liked that these were very versatile and you could incorporate smaller ones into a room as sculptures or paperweights, a variety of functions. Hopefully you’ll enjoy these as much as I do and if you’re feeling inspired why not head towards Joel’s page where he talks more about his work and passion

www.joelsayre.com