Out of the woods

NICK Clarke never had woodwork lessons at school. He was 21 when he first tried his hand at making something from a small block of pine, he says, and he reaches over to pick it up from his workshop windowsill.

It is a perfect wooden sculpture of a leopard.

"This was the first thing I ever did with wood. I was studying landscape architecture at the time. I was frustrated with the two dimensional design," he explains.

"I got myself a penknife. I whittled away in my bedroom - I used to drive the cleaners barmy, with shavings around the room."

His second piece was an equally impressive reclining female figure. It's hard to believe that these pieces were done by a man without any training.

But the sudden discovery of his talent came not a moment too soon.

"I became quite ill and couldn't do the course any more. Somebody offered me the chance to become an apprentice for nothing: 'I will feed you, give you a roof over your head and that's all you will get from me', sort of thing. Of course, I jumped at the chance."

That's how Nick, from Liverpool, found himself working in a carpenter's shop near Ilkley. "It was such an ideal place to recover from a major illness, and just to learn a great trade."

He later moved to York, the city where both his great grandmother and his grandmother came from, and took part in the Coppergate archaeological dig.

Unfortunately his experience of working in the furniture trade in York was not a happy one.

"I didn't like a lot of the values I saw in the industry; the back-biting, the bitching that people do, the things they looked at and read. I didn't want to be a part of that."

Nick's Christian faith is central to his life, and friends from St Paul's Church in Holgate helped him set up on his own. One couple offered him storage space at their house in Holgate: gradually, with their blessing, he took over their garage which has become his workshop.

Evidence for his affinity for wood is all around. On the plane is a crocodile, grinning with wooden teeth. On a chair sits a "prototype tortoise" whose head bobs in and out as it is pulled along. Child-size chairs are hung on pegs, shelves lean against the walls.

That so much of his work is for children is no surprise: Nick, 37, and wife Gillie, have a two-year-old daughter Ellice.

Each job is as different and individual as the customer. His first commission as an independent businessman was an elm TV and hi-fi cabinet.

Another early job did not go exactly to plan. "A customer wanted a lightweight massage table so they could carry it around.

"I used the wrong sort of materials. The first time she ever used the thing a large bloke sat on it.

"She started work and the whole thing collapsed." He laughs. "I shouldn't ever have taken it on, but you learn from these things."

One of his quirkier jobs was building medieval screens for a downstairs loo at a home in Healaugh, near Tadcaster. "There's a drawer where a little mouse sleeps. It's a little compartment for the kid to keep their treasures," he said.

The children love it, and so do guests: "People spend a while in there," he smiles.

Nick worked with a colleague on his biggest project, a gallery, or pergola, for a private garden at a North Yorkshire village. Based loosely on something similar at Hampton Court, it used five-and-a-half tonnes of green oak, with arches 8ft across.

A lot of his customers only have vague ideas of what they want. He produces sketched designs before starting a piece. "Ultimately, a lot of the design work is done as you're working."

One couple had just been to India "and were very influenced by the colours and the shapes that they had seen. I tried to translate their photographs to their kitchen".

So a beautiful kitchen was created from a former boiler room. "It's taking an ordinary problem and thinking the extraordinary," he says.

Among his favourite pieces are chairs. "For a furniture maker chairs are always the thing. There's something about a chair..."

He has crafted a delightful beech recliner which has a Thirties look to it. It is a modernised version of the sort of chair you might have sat upon on the deck of a steam ship. He uses ash to craft garden chairs, because of the wood's flexibility.

Nick is very modest about his work. "What we're doing is messing around with wood, and hopefully coming up with something a bit unusual," is how he explains his craftmanship.

Now a member of the Calvary Chapel at Walmgate Bar, his ambition is to use his business to further his Christian ideals. "I have a vision for the business to reach out to other people and share the good news, to clothe them and feed them. That's a very long-term aim."

Another member of the church, Richard Tamburro, 20, has become Nick's informal apprentice. He is a third-year physics and philosophy undergraduate at York University.

Nick's business is so labour intensive it will never make a great deal of money. But he does not mind. "I just love what I do," he says.

Nick Clarke can be contacted on (01904) 795567 or 07703 234196