What's New at Bowlwood.com

Tall Yew Weedpot Vase

A new gallery of wooden vases has been added to the Bowlwood site. These vases are handcrafted on a woodturning lathe from the most interesting and beautiful hardwoods I can find. The vases are intended to hold dry materials, such as weeds, dried flowers, feathers, seed heads, etc; for that reason, they have traditionally been referred to as "weedpots" by woodturners.


The very first item I made when starting to learn the craft of woodturning was a weedpot. I was proud of my first accomplishment on the lathe, and showed it to family and friends; they all seemed to like it, and so an obsession was born. I turned many hundreds of weedpots in the subsequent years, experimenting with every variation of form I could imagine. A major interest of mine was discovering what was inside as many different species of wood as I could find locally, and so turning weedpots filled a need to create with my hands, as well as the desire to learn.

Bittersweet Vine Vase

Eventually, I realized that making only weedpots was stunting the development of my turning skills, so I finally "branched" out (pardon the pun) to turning bowls. They had initially held no interest for me, since my impression was that "everyone turns bowls". But turn them I did, by the hundreds. Just like the weedpots.

Butternut Vase

Somewhere along the way, lamps, keepsake boxes, music boxes, candlesticks, and scads of other things snuck into the mix as well. Today, after having taken a break from turning vases, I find I have a renewed interest in them, and that's why you'll now find a "Vases" link on the Bowlwood site. The latest addition is the tall Yew weedpot pictured above.

There are many more weedpots available on the Timberturner website too, some of which can be seen in the photos along the right margin of this page.