MANDY HAGGITH investigates the ‘horn craft’ of JOHNNY ROSS

THE landscape of West Sutherland is among the most dramatic in Scotland, and Johnny Ross’s home looks out to one of its most exquisite views, up the ice-carved glen across Loch Glencoull to the tallest waterfall in Britain, Eas a Chual Aluinn, and onwards to the craggy Assynt mountains. The hill tops are frequently graced by antler-crowned ‘Monarchs of the Glen’.

Johnny Ross

Although stags have become a cliché of Highland Tourism, in Johnny’s case they are far from an empty symbol. They have been at the centre of his working life and are now the basis of his new ‘horn craft’ business, using the ancient practice of working with antler to make useful implements and gifts.

Johnny Ross could not have a stronger link to the area, having lived there all of his life. He was born and bred in Edderachilles, the parish between Durness and Assynt in the North West Highlands. As a child, he attended the primary school at Unapool, reached by ferry from Kylestrome before the Kylesku bridge was built. ‘If it was a windy day, there was no school. Fantastic!’ he laughs.

As a teenager, along with all the other children of the area, he was sent across to the east coast for school, but in 1974 he returned home and found work at Reay Forest Estate, where his father worked and where he has remained ever since. ‘There’s quite an association between the estate and my family’, he says. ‘You get to know the land, there’s no doubt about that, and you know the people as well.’

For years he helped to manage the deer, sheep and fishing on the estate, which is owned by the Westminsters, but a recent car accident has left him with a long-standing injury which means that he can no longer ‘do a fulltime job on the hill’. He has therefore turned to a lifelong interest, turning cast antlers into useful things, a craft which he learned from his father. He describes his horn craft as ‘a hobby that’s threatening to get out of hand’. With talk of a bigger shed, a new business is burgeoning.

Traditional walking sticks

Johnny makes a surprising range of objects from horn. They include traditional walking sticks, made of hazel or holly, blackthorn or ash, all with polished horn handles. He shapes bases for lamps out of horn and uses it to adorn modern kitchen implements, from salt spoons to cheese knives, pokers and brushes. He has a range of buttons and toggles and will make such objects to order.

Most of the horn he works with is from red deer, though he also uses antlers of roe and sika deer and the horns of rams and black buffalo. The rams horn polishes up to an almost mother-of-pearl sheen, and he combines this with deer antler to remarkable effect, for example creating glistening tips to walking stick handles. He relishes exploiting the shapes and patterns of the natural horn, and the way he does this distinguishes his products from those by other people. ‘Another maker would be able to tell my work, from the angles of my cuts and the way I combine horns’, he says.

Candlestick Holder

Years of experience have taught him how to cut the horn to maximise the strength of the finished article, or to ensure that a spur on an antler becomes a comfortable thumb hold on a handle. ‘The way I do things, as a hobby, is to try things out,’ he says. ‘It has built up over the years, just trying things out.’

People bring him antlers from far and wide, and his workshop is literally stuffed full of them. Although he sometimes uses horn from stags that are shot, he says, ‘the antlers that are cast are far better, because the blood has dried up so the horn doesn’t smell. If you cut them off a shot animal the blood will pour out, and even after ages you can still smell the blood.

‘The deer cast their antlers basically because there’s another one coming through. There’s a bug that eats the horn, like a wee termite – it chomps through it, making a honey-comb effect.’

He is finding that both local people and visitors to Assynt are keen to buy his products. ‘The horn is a natural material and it’s associated with the area. The Assynt stuff is very good. The quality of the horn especially on Quinag, around Nedd, is excellent. I think it’s because of the trees. If you can get horn from deer in woods it is substantially better, it’s superb quality, it’s magnificent, with a deep brown colour to it.’

Table Lamp

Johnny sells his horn artefacts at craft fairs and through direct contacts, plus it is for sale at Sutherland Gemcutters in Lochinver and Crafts on the Croft at Drumbeg. ‘People seem to like it. When visitors come up to the Highlands there are two things they want to see: red deer and golden eagles. And the horn is associated with the deer – perfect! It’s a good souvenir of their holiday.’ The fact that his work is reasonably priced and superb quality no doubt helps.

He says that people are particularly pleased to know that the cast horn is best. ‘We live in an age when animals are put on a pedestal, and some people don’t want something from a shot beast.’ Yet he is quick to point out the necessity of stalking. ‘If you don’t kill them off the hill there’ll be too many, and we’d have a weaker species. You have to take out the weak ones and leave the strong ones. We’re responsible for the animals, we need to do the best for them.’

When asked if he considers himself to be an artist, he chuckles. ‘It’s a craft. Art is painting. Craft is something you work with your hands. Art is something you do on paper. So I’d always say this is a craft.’ He picks up a walking stick, the handle of which is made of ramshorn, carved into a fishtail. ‘Perhaps it depends how intricate you get it,’ he says, finally admitting that some of his work, ‘might be bordering on art’.

Art or craft, there’s great pride in his voice as he acknowledges that he is keeping an ancient tradition going. ‘It is satisfying, to be doing something that people have been doing for hundreds, or thousands, of years.’

© Mandy Haggith, 2011

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