Mandy Haggith catches up with the traditional woodland crafts practised by Mike Ellis

MOST of the crafts people I have interviewed are keen to be thought of as artists, so it is interesting to meet someone who views being seen as ‘arty farty’ as ‘a danger.’ Mike Ellis works as a woodsman, and though some of the things he makes may be beautiful, they are not, in his view, works of art.

IN Mike’s workshop, its walls lined with an extraordinary collection of tools, there is a gate, hand-made from greenwood, its shape coming from the natural bends of oak and ash branches held together with beech pegs. Such an object has both the value of scarcity and is refreshing to modern eyes, so used to the geometric precision of industrial products. I could easily be persuaded to call it art, but it’s not at all clear Mike would be pleased if I did.

Hand-made gate and hurdle by Mike Ellis

He shows me a stool. ‘Look. It’s made from a few bits of small wood, or underwood, as we call it. People look at it and say ‘ooh, that’s really nice, I like that’, as if it’s something special. But it’s not. It’s really simple. I made it in two mornings with a bunch of kids.’

There is a paradox in being a practitioner of a craft so rare that its products stand out as something almost unique, yet which for thousands of years was simply how most everyday rural objects were made. Mike is dismayed that in our society people have become so disconnected from the land that there is little understanding of where wooden objects come from and how they are made, and he is on a mission to change this.

Originally born into an army family, he went into the forces aged 17, and took up the trade of a woodsman when he left the army 17 years later. For years now, he has made his living as a woodsman: laying hedges, managing coppiced woodlands and making useful objects from the wood that he cuts. He came to Sutherland about ten years ago, living first in Rogart, now in Helmsdale. ‘It’s a strange place to be, northern Scotland, for a woodsman,’ he says. Here so much of the land is controlled by the Forestry Commission and huge estates with no interest in maintaining traditional woodland management methods.

He gained his own interest in woods from his grandfather, who was a forester, and he also has a history degree, which gives him access to the documentary evidence of how woodland management has changed over time. He is quick to dispel any dewy-eyed romanticism about the life of a woodlander. ‘We need to get rid of the myth that a woodlander’s life was idyllic. A lot of it was piece work to make the products that were in everyday use, very repetitive and physically hard, as in the case of charcoal making.’

Mike Ellis

He is currently working a coppice woodland called the Marrel, which he manages with a group of local volunteers called the Helmsdale Woodlanders. ‘It was coppiced in the past, for use in the thriving fishing industry, so it’s mostly hazel and willow. It hasn’t been coppiced for decades, although there are still people in the village who remember going cutting there, but the demand really died with the fishing.’ The products of this woodland would have been used to make fishing creels and baskets, along with a range of other practical household objects and all manner of things used on crofts – cart beds, gates, fencing, hurdles, tool handles and the timbers used for construction.

These days Mike’s emphasis has shifted from making and selling wooden objects, to passing on his skills to the next generation. He runs the only accredited woodsman skills training course in Scotland, in connection with the Open College Network. ‘What I try to do is to make the connection between woodland management and the products that come out of the woods as part of the thinning or management process,’ he says. The course covers coppice management techniques such as layering and stooling, use of greenwood tools for cleaving (splitting) and shaping wood, and charcoal production.

Tools of the trade

The array of tools in his workshop is extraordinary, with dozens of axes, draw knives, billhooks and tools, the names of which are from another era. ‘Each tool is specialised for a trade’, he says, pointing out a cooper’s draw knife, curved for making barrel hoops. ‘The scale depends on the job and the size of the material you’re working with. They go from small to you’ve-got-to-be-joking!’ They are all for working with greenwood, that is, wood that has not been seasoned so it’s still sappy and easy to shape with sharp-edged tools.

‘The important thing about greenwood working is not so much the product,’ says Mike, ‘it’s the way that it’s done. There are particular techniques we use, like cleaving, to split wood along the fibres to keep its strength.’

It is also integrally about the woodland management from which the material comes. ‘I find the act of making stuff satisfying on quite a few levels, but I can’t divorce that from the woodland.’ So he is saddened to see formerly managed woods being neglected. ‘What you see with non-management of woodland is a decrease in biodiversity, because as the canopy closes you lose a range of species that like different light levels.’

Sometimes after a coppice has been unmanaged for too long and become ‘derelict’, the stools can be too old to be brought back into full production, but selective cutting will improve its health and vigour. For this to happen, it’s necessary to keep woodland skills alive and hence Mike’s emphasis has shifted to passing them onto young people, in the hope that a future generation of woodlanders will have better access to woods. ‘It’s not that we lack the natural resources’, he says. ‘It’s the mentality of not recognising woodland culture that has to change.’

Making a livelihood as a woodlander these days is precarious, and Mike is sceptical about the current market in greenwood products, noting that the traditional rural markets have collapsed. ‘People have a propensity for nostalgia’, he says. ‘Greenwood’s niche has gravitated to the luxury end of the market because there are so few people doing it. But when you cease to have a connection with the working landscape it’s in danger of becoming arty-farty, and totally irrelevant to its traditional place in the working countryside.’

For the sake of the health of our woodlands, if nothing else, we have to hope Mike’s greenwood craft is prevented from becoming a dying art.

© Mandy Haggith, 2012

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