CREATIVE CORNER

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!'

'Whist up at Rotherhithe recently with Murph I found the remains of a chairleg on the foreshore whilst walking back to the cars, so thought I'd make something useful from it like I did with the Tudor bowl. I sea fish and live on the coast at Sandwich so put it on my lathe earlier and made a simple 'priest'. Just need to drill out the head and put a lump of lead inside. Another example of Thames Foreshore re cycling'.

'Here's a few rings I made this week out of 3 old pre decimal coins that like most of us have just sitting in a box somewhere. The first is a 1960 Half Crown, (my year of birth). The second is an old Penny dated 1967 that you'd think was gold, and the last is a 2 shilling coin dated 1970 that I made for my wife as it's her year of birth.

I am currently making a ring out of a very worn George 3rd Half Crown as it is in poor condition as a coin but solid silver so will make a nice ring'.