Barn the Spoon (Barnaby Carder)

Having been obsessed with woodwork since the age of 12, and spending his teens turning bowls, making wooden jewellry and abstract sculpture, Barn ended up doing a woodland based chair making apprenticeship, followed by three years travelling around the country, living in the woods making and peddling hand-carved wooden spoons on the streets of the Britains towns & cities. In 2012 Barn opened his notorious East-London spoon shop.

In 2017 Penguin published Barn's first book Spon, which sets out his vision of functional sculpture through 16 different styles of spoons

A respected leader in the craft, Barn teaches both in the UK and Internationally. The resurgence in spoon carving over the last decade has been widely attributed to his work popularising the craft.

Approach to teaching:
I aim to teach safe and efficient techniques not just focused on the product during the class but to provide participents with a strong foundation enabling them to continue their learning at home.

What inspires my own work?
For me each spoon I craft is akin to a performance of a song - the dance of axes and knives and the character of the wood itself are captured in three dimensions as a performance, then spoons as sculptures go off into the world to communicate my own attempts at making sense of the nature of things. And if that communication fails then at least someone can stir the food in their pan and transport it from bowls to mouths.

"No one in Britain knows more about crafting a spoon from green wood than Barn The Spoon" -
The Guardian