‘Using Wood For Good’ Event Review

PROVENANCE

To start the discussion, our host Carole Annett, Interiors Editor of Country & Town House magazine, asked Dougal Driver, CEO of Grown in Britain, ‘Is the sound of the chainsaw a good thing in the British countryside?’ The answer is yes, when it is making our sustainably managed woodlands productive. Unbelievably the UK is the second biggest importer of timber in the world after China, while almost half of our woodlands are under managed and therefore not being utilised for home grown timber.

Goldfinger Co-Founder and CEO, Marie Carlisle, spoke of how they use reclaimed or grown in Britain timber for their products, although recently they have found another supply of timber which comes from urban trees that are felled due to disease, storms and urban development, these would ordinarily get chipped or burned. Marie showed us Goldfinger’s beautiful chopping boards made from flamed beech which have the GPS coordinates of where the tree once stood stamped onto the underside; this, she says, keeps us connected to the history of the tree and it is this emotional connection that always grabs the interest of the customers.

wellbeing

Marie reminded us that it is actually good for your health and wellbeing to be surrounded by wood. Having wooden materials in our interior environment is naturally very therapeutic and Marie likened it to having an extension of the forest into the home, very calming and soothing. Marie referenced a great fact from studies which showed that touching plastics or aluminium raised blood pressure, whereas touching wood kept blood pressure levels the same or even lowered, which just shows the physiological response our bodies have to wood. Interestingly, when she has guests to her workshop, Marie says that they don’t stop touching the products, the different wood surfaces are just so tactile, it’s not something they invite people to do, rather an instinctive reaction that people have to the wood.