Creative Corner More from Gander Searcher's stuff
Many of the things we find on the foreshore have been handmade by someone and all throughout history people have recycled and re-used the everyday objects around them. Some of us at T+F have a talent for working with the debris we find on the Thames foreshore and this page and the links above show off some of our creations.
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Graham Anderson aka 'Gander' has a talent for creating wonderful things from items he finds on the River. These pieces are all based on known historical artefacts and I'm sure you'll agree look fantastic. Great stuff Gander..
'A couple of weeks ago I was at Rotherhithe with Murph and Howdy Mike and couldn't help noticing all the wood, including lumps of old ships wood and logs washed up on the foreshore. I've been woodturning for years and thought it would be a laugh to 'rescue' a log from the foreshore and then make something useful from it. Isn't this what the original Mudlarks did?. Anway I like making bowls out of wood so looked up those recovered from the Mary Rose that sank in 1545. Ordinary sailors had to use a wooden bowl and of course their trusty knife to eat but officers had pewter ones. So, I came up a week or so ago and recovered a log and brought it back home with me, cut it up on the bandsaw and made a couple of bowl blanks out of it. It had been above the tide line for years so was well dry. Luckily. Turns out to be an old elm log someone obviously dumped in the Thames.
I made the bowl today, took about an half and hour once on the lathe. I think back in Tudor times they must have had someone on board who had the tools and skills to make anything the ship needed. Maybe they had the surname 'Turner'. I have marked it with 3 burnt in lines which the sailors did to 'mark' their own individual bowls from others. Bit of oil over it and all done, one useful bowl made from Thames Foreshore crap!'
