Visiting HT Morris, and my first experience at a Scythe festival

I rolled up to Harry’s workshop after a long, painful, and exhausting but beautiful bike ride traveling through the Cotswolds, staying the previous night in the quaint town of Bibury before passing through the historical city of Cirencester, the journey that day took me 7 hours in the baking June sun. I felt fragile, quivering as I climbed off my bike. I glugged the last of my water before lying spread eagle on the floor awaiting his arrival. A few moments passed before Harry’s car pulled up, and out he stepped with his friend Arian De Geode, we exchanged hugs and smiles before entering the workshop. I was exhausted from the 2 day ride of 72 miles or so from Oxford, of which 41miles I’d done that day after camping in a field near Bibury, but this exhaustion didn’t stop me from engaging in conversations about woodwork and restoration over a beer and a game of pool. We vibed about rippled English walnut and Japanese hand tools as my concentration and energy slipped away from me.

Harry’s workshop is a small but open space, it’s minimal design in terms of machinery and equipment maker for a free and welcome environment embellished with objects of pride, past projects, designs, books, and his collection of conifer cones cover the walls neatly, so it’s obvious that harry has made efforts to bolster the welcoming nature of the space, it’s a place that is nice to be. It’s a multifunctional workshop, where he makes furniture, and restores furniture, but also teaches and even hosts his friends, and now a place for weary cyclists to rest their head. I was the first person who slept in here, it might even have been the first time I’d slept in a workshop overnight, so I can tick that one off the bucket list.

This wasn’t, however, the first time I had been to his workshop, I’d been here, with Trigger (my bike), the previous year after studying with Takami Kawai, who Harry had also studied with, through Takami is, in fact, how we know each other, it’s always nice to have a familiar tone with a place, especially a workshop. Harry clearly has a communal approach to the way he does things, you see this in that he has made his workshop so welcoming, with a sofa and wood-burning stove, hammock and chairs it’s a place where you might be happy to spend time. This made me wonder about some of the other conversations I’d had with other makers about the extended solitude that can be normal in the practice of woodwork, often makers start teaching in response to solitude, but perhaps one answer is to provide a space in your working environment to allows people to feel welcome? A social environment, one that invites people in for a cup of tea and a chin wag, the Scandinavian word ‘fika’ comes to mind. That evening, the three of us woodworking enthusiasts were more than happy to spend time here, we played pool and talked shop, shared anecdotes about work, and dribbled over some of Harry’s impressive hand tool collection. Eventually, it was time to call it a night, I had cycled a lot, my clothes were filthy and so was I, so Harry and Arian left me with a hammock to sleep in and a fire to keep me company. What a wonderful experience it is to sleep in a workshop. Being surrounded by my favorite types of objects: furniture, and the tools that make furniture. Tending to the fire, I had a realization that I was in the midst of quite a fun memory, and one that I can share with Harry and Arian, it reminded me of the story of when my dad and his friend Helmut first met as young men, a kind of ridiculous story involving travel, bizarre clothes and awkward sleeping arrangements, not too dissimilar to what was happening this evening. As I drifted off, a field mouse came to inspect my belongings “I ought to tell harry about his mouse problem” I thought to myself.

In the morning I pottered around in a sleepy daze, occasionally getting distracted by a tool or a shiny piece of wood. I rustled together some coffee as the guys turned up, this time with Shane. Shane is a conservator and restorer, as is Arian, in fact, the three of them studied together at West-Dean college, an incredible heritage craft school in a stately home once owned by a true eccentric aristocrat by the name of Edward James. Now the stately home hosts schooling in crafts such as goldsmithing, clock making, bookbinding, furniture making, restoration and conservation, and instrument making. All in the name of heritage and tradition, hoping to keep these crafts alive. We sat and got to know each other as I drank my coffee and after some conversations about what to do with the day we decided to go to a Scythe festival that was being hosted locally, recommended by Harry’s brother Sam. Jestingly, we agreed that it would the safest place to visit because, although, the Grim Reaper might be attracted to such a place, he wouldn’t be there on business but leisure.

We piled in to Harry’s car and off we went. I had no idea what to expect and it was a completely bizarre idea to me, but in all fairness, it was probably one of the quaintest and most exciting things that 4 woodworkers could do together as an icebreaker. With plenty of crafty types of people, tool purveyors, timber retailers, rope making, thatchers, blacksmiths, coppicer’s and hedge-layers all had stalls at this surprisingly large festival, the largest scythe festival in the country. And not forgetting, international competitive scything. On the way to the scythe festival, Shane and I sat in the car together and had an impromptu conversation about the studio-woodworking movement of the late 19th century. Among many things Shane is a conservator and restorer, but talking to him you get the impression that he is a well-schooled sort of intellectual in his profession. He's the mastermind behind 'crafts and conversation' and also shares a podcast with Harry 'this crafted world', dubbed the "endless apprentice" he has spent the last couple of years traveling the world as a journeyman, visiting, staying and working with other furniture conservators and restorers he has a vast breadth of knowledge both practical and theoretical, gained from his experiences in the field. He told me about the studio-woodwork movement that came from the 70’s as magazines like FineWoodworking and Popular-Woodworking started to emerge. In the mid-to-late century, industrialization was high and powerful, and individuals who made things were struggling to compete with the machine, so there was a need to split away from industry and create a new niche of craft, one that celebrated the perfectionism of work both in the end-product and in the practice, a perfectionism unattainable by the factories and the machines of the industry. And from this, the aesthetically pleasing and romantic studio-woodworker, with a clean and photogenic workshop and slick apron was born. This is perhaps the predecessor to the new movement of craft, the one we are currently in, the social media-fuelled renaissance of DIY craft.

That afternoon we spent several sun-bliss hours exploring the festival, occasionally we would collectively gather around an interesting tool or find an interesting person to query about their vintage car, or Scythe. There seems to be a shared essence of intrigue and curiosity among craftspeople. Considering that the 4 of us were woodworkers of some kind, perhaps I was the odd one out being a furniture maker and Shane and Arian restorers, Harry happily bridges the gap, often lending his hand to both professions. Despite the minute differences in our individual crafts, we would all engage and be fascinated by the same things, it was quite charming to be able to walk around a place with three other people that like being nerdy about the same things, especially considering id only met 2 of them in the past day. Harry’s brother was already at the festival, and we found him sipping on some cider with his partner, he was joking about the idea of buying a scythe. Harry and his brother have a side-hustle, soon to be front-hustle for Sam I think. Got Greens farm is Harry and sam’s shared dream of growing food and vegetables using organic and permaculture methods for the local community. And again this is something that seemingly we were all interested in.

There must be a link between being creative and being interested and curious about the built or grown world around you. Tools were a source of fascination for all of us, even Sam, perhaps the fascination in tools is found in the potential for what that tool can offer, and what it can help us create. Why would a group of woodworkers be interested in farming too? I’d say that growing food is creating something, therefore it’s creative, as is building a chair or restoring a cabinet. It’s all just a means to create.

Closing time approached and we waited for Sam as he excused himself to find a toilet. We spoke in-depth about the varying properties and qualities of different adhesives, probably subjugating Sam’s partner to boredom in the process. Upon concluding that hide-glue is the best kind of glue if one is inclined to use animal products, Sam emerged with a rusty-looking, metal-handled scythe in one hand and a big grin on his face. Of course, this new tool was now the center of our attention for the rest of the day.

We drove back to Harry’s workshop after a bite to eat at his house, with his dog. On the way to the workshop we took the opportunity of having a scythe and did some roadside mowing, mainly to uncover Harry’s business sign from all of the weeds and rush that were hiding it from view.

Visiting Harry has been a pleasure, especially meeting his friends who excel in restoration, it’s not every day I get to talk about the ins and outs of furniture restoration. It turns out it’s a very anthropomorphic kind of practice, involving modern techniques alongside historical practices and materials, history and philosophy. Shane explained the difference between conservation and restoration and when to apply either/or should be subject to the object in question and what the intended outcome is. The example we talked about was ‘The Resolute desk’, this is a desk that has been used by most US presidents since 1880, as such you might want to conserve the history of it’s continued use, imbued into the oak of its carcass, however, a piece being exhibited in a display of craftsmanship like a table made by David Roentgen, for example, might demand to be restored in order to celebrate its original quality, or maybe you don’t in a bid not to disrupt any of the original maker’s touch? It’s a complicated philosophical game to play, one that Shane is tired of playing. The job that Arian, Shane and Harry do is impressive to me, they match skills to era and then execute them to match the practitioner and material from that era. The variation of understanding they need is vast and I’m in awe that they do this work on sometimes heavily sentimental objects.

My time spent with them was refreshing, insightful and enjoyable. Not least because it felt to me like spending time with new friends but also because I got to flex my skills intellectually with people who could beat me in an intellectual spar any day of the week, shop-talk is a wonderful thing and even better with a cider in one hand whilst watching an international scythe competition.

P.S I did remember to tell harry about his mouse problem.

Follow these links if you are interested in the people in this article: Harry Morris Shane Orion Wiechnik Arian de Goede

Sam Morris - Got Greens farm