麻豆社

In 2012, Robert Penn felled (and replanted) a great ash from a Welsh wood. He set out to explore the true value of the tree of which we have made the greatest and most varied use in human history. How many things can be made from one tree?

Over the next two years he travelled across Britain, to Europe and the USA, to the workshops and barns of a generation of craftsmen committed to working in wood. He watched them make over 45 artefacts and tools that have been in continual use for centuries, if not millennia.

Rob takes a carefully selected log to Robin Wood, Britain's best-known wood-turner. He has agreed to use it to form a nest of three bowls - a difficult task, "the Holy grail of turning". As he works the wood in his Peak District cow shed, he's following a craft which dates back to ancient times - a beautifully decorated Celtic ash bowl was found at the Iron Age site of Glastonbury Lake village. And from the fall of the Roman Empire, a culture of woodware thrived in Britain. For at least a thousand years from AD 500, every man and woman in Europe, from kings and queens to paupers and serfs, ate and drank each day from a wooden vessel turned on a lathe.

This is a tale about the joy of making things in wood, of its touch and smell, its many uses, and the resonant, calming effect of running our hands along a wooden surface. It is a celebration of man's close relationship with this greatest of natural materials and a reminder of the value of things made by hand and made to last.

Abridged by Jo Coombs
Produced by Hannah Marshall
A Loftus Media production for 麻豆社 Radio 4.