Last week I went with friends to the Woodturning Connect Master’s Exhibition held in the Pewterers’ Hall in London. This exhibition – on the theme of the Coronation of King Charles III – was organised by the Worshipful Company of Turners.

I loved walking around the small exhibition, where each of the twenty or so pieces was so different from the other, and so skillful. Some were intricately patterned and coloured, some imaginative, some practical, and one, chosen by the V&A Museum, was a genius interlocking of four giant rings, titled Continuity Rings. It was beautiful – so complex, but so simple and pleasing, and being the size of small bicycle tyres, big enough to easily appreciate. I noticed that in the brochure they used the word torus rather than ring, describing the piece as ‘a sculpture of four interlocking segmented toruses made from 2,048 oak segments.’ The turner who produced the piece was Nathanael Griffiths, aged 20 from Chester.

A torus, in case you’re wondering, is (according to the Cambridge dictionary): ‘a shape that is a circular tube that is hollow inside’. It goes on to say :‘a popular shape for space stations is the doughnut shape also called a torus’.

Imperial Crown Chalice, shown in the photograph above, was another exhibit that I was drawn to. This was created by Barnaby Ash and Dru Plumb, the brochure describing it as a ‘playful and ancient reference to the form of the imperial crown but reinterpreted as a vessel … This vessel features many natural fissures that we have celebrated through stitchwork repair.’ I loved the deep colours in the wood, and longed to pick it up and touch its smoothness, everything about its simple oakiness and texture appealing to me.

But understandably, there was no touching of the exhibits, just the chance to admire these real treasures in wood, individual and ingenious in their interpretation of the theme. Sadly my postcard is not enough to do any of them justice.

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023