ABOUT

I'm a spoon carver, based in Hay on Wye, Powys, Mid-Wales. I've carved spoons continuously for the last three years.

My craft seems deceptively simple: the basic age-old tools, the lack of machinery or electric power, the pieces of wood and the finished products waiting to cook, stir, spread and scoop.

Spoons are so ubiquitous that you can be forgiven for not realising they are still being carved by hand – that they come from hands and are not just used by hands.

I try to live by the ethics of the Slow Living movement, and I am passionate about wood in all its many forms – spending most of my time amongst trees, crafting my spoons from wood and encouraging their use as every day tools.

As I'd never hurt a living tree, all of my wood is ethically-sourced, and comes to me as storm-felled branches, or from neighbours and friends, or what I find on my daily wanders.

Currently, my spoons are made from silver birch, hazel, sycamore, walnut and cherry wood.

All my products are made from natural wood, so I have to go with the flow of Mother Nature and follow the natural grain of the individual piece of wood.

Although some spoons may be similar in size and form, I do not carve batches of the same spoon, meaning no two spoons are identical.

Please enjoy browsing my shop, but if there is anything in particular you'd like to see, please do get in touch via the Contact page. I am happy to take on bespoke commissions. 

Why the name Oh Pioneer?

It's a play on words, which gives a nod to the poem Pioneers! O Pioneers! by the American poet Walt Whitman, as well as a homage to the silver birch tree, which is also known as the "Pioneer Tree", due to its ability to be one of the first trees to colonise new (or cleared) land.

Stephen Lewis, June 2020