Harald Lamon Davidson

A HEART FOR WOOD

My love for wood and wood carving has always been there, but the path to it was not

obvious. As a child, I remember many hours spent tinkering with a pocketknife, saw,

hammer and nails to make bows, swords, shields and everything else that was part of

my imagination at the time. Later, I started making furniture for my own bedroom.

In my adolescence, playing with wood was less normal for my peers and at school

it was more important to study hard than be creative. At that time, there was an old

stone sharpening wheel in the shed next to the house where we lived. I had no clue

about grinding then, but if you pushed wooden sticks against such a wheel, the wood

would start to burn and you could make unusual patterns with those black lines.

I secretly felt like an inventor and that was great.

Once at university, while studying psychology, I again felt the urge to work with

wood. I enrolled in a traditional wood carving course. By traditional, I mean wood

carving with chisels and gouges in perfectly dried and straight oak planks to make

carvings, like the ones you see on confessionals in church. This course was not quite

what I was looking for to get creative with wood. Chisels and wood were expensive

for a student and a workbench wouldn’t fit in my student room. But I did learn a lot

about wood and tools then. Only later did I realize the value of these classes.

Later, when I settled down, wood was mainly a material for remodelling and

renovation. I learnt to work with machines. Then we moved to a house with a big

garden and I tried again to build with branches and be creative with wood. Together

with my sons, I finally rediscovered the child in myself and made a two-storey tree

house and a 538 sq ft (50 sq m) oak shed in the garden.

Writing all of this, it seems obvious that I would be absolutely thrilled when I saw

someone making a spoon out of a branch about 12 years ago, using only an axe, a

knife and a spoon knife. I finally felt like I knew what to do with wood. It seemed

completely right, it almost felt like coming home. I wondered why I hadn’t thought

of it myself for the previous 30 years. It started with the first spoon I carved then –

and part of the journey I’ve taken since then can be found in this book (called

Heart for Wood in the original Dutch edition).

For my students, I try to be the teacher I would have liked to find myself in those

first years in our small country. I wrote this book with the same question in the back

of my mind: what would I have wanted to read ten years ago?

Although it never feels like work, being a craftsman is something that never stops,

starts or ends. It is a way of life. When I take a bike ride with my wife, she sees all

the shops, beautiful houses and cosy streets along the way. I, however, mostly see

all the trees and bushes, all the wooden structures, studios and creative, unique

constructions. We always see the world from our own perspective. Trees are the

common thread in my life and my future is as exciting and multifaceted as the wood

I work with every day. It’s not always sunshine and roses, but I am a happy person.

Harald