My Castle, My Rules.

Occasionally I get asked to make something individual to the person. This is often something unusual and out of the ordinary run of things I make. One such request arrived in my inbox the other day and my curiosity was immediately jarred into life. The enquiry came form a customer who had previously bought things from my Numonday shop and who wanted to know if I could turn a particular item for her. The customer is as I understand it a medieval re-enactor and her character is called Black Agnes.

Now, I had to look this up because I wanted to get a feel of the character for the item I had been asked to create, and to find out about her I had to delve back into Scottish history. Black Agnes, it transpires, was the name given to Agnes Randolph, Countess of Dunbar, on account of her unusually dark skin. Agnes was the wife of Patrick, the 9th Earl of Dunbar. At the beginning of 1338 and whilst her husband was away - fighting the English, I assume - the English in turn, under the leadership of one William Montagu, the 1st Earl of Salisbury, laid siege to the castle.  In an early attempt to achieve his objective, Montague catapulted large rocks and boulders at the castle. However, Agnes wasn't having any of this and she responded by getting one of her ladies in waiting to ostentatiously brush the dust and debris from the ramparts, which must have been humiliating for Montagu. To cut a long story short, Agnes held the castle until Montagu was compelled to admit defeat and lifted the siege in June of the same year, some six months after it began.

So what has this to do with my customer's request? Well, I had been set the challenge of making a feather duster. Makes sense now, doesn't it? The specification was that it had to be 12 inches in overall length and must be black. The only black wood I could think of is ebony and it would have taken me a while to get hold of a suitable piece. Apart from that, though, ebony is critically endangered and I try very hard to not use wood from any species that is deemed to be at high risk. Instead, I used a piece of sapele. Now, you could argue that I substituted one at-risk species for another. However, sapele is currently classed as vulnerable to exploitation and not as critically at risk as ebony. So that's alright, then. Well, no, probably not, but on the other hand I wasn't ordering in a wood I didn't have in my stock, and the sapele I had was already from a felled tree and was sitting on my shelf. Not using it wasn't going to stop the tree being felled. And it looks nice.

Sapele is a medium dark wood, so still not black. Having completed the turning, I took a gas torch to it  and set light to it, as you do. That worked and it was thoroughly blackened. There is no smoke alarm in my workshop! I do have a fire extinguisher, though. Once suitably singed and sanded, I added a black wax to deepen the effect, followed by a silver enhancing wax to lightly restore the grain pattern. I put together a large number of black ostrich feathers for the business end, and plaited some leather cord to make a hanging strap. 

I'm pleased with it and I hope Black Agnes will be, too.