12 ★ FTWeekend 17 August/18 August 2019House Home
The Aberfeldy workshopis found in
an old furniture factory built in 1876 in a
residential street. There, Ross makes a
wide range of oak furniture in his dis-
tinctive style.
The most vulnerable part of any tim-
ber to rot is exposed end-grain, soRoss
seeks to conceal it. To achieve this, his
workshop has 5ft-long steam tanks that
blastlengths of oak with a bath of hot
vapour until the cells are permeatedand softened, and the wood becomes
flexible. Rossthen twists the wood into
forms that are clamped and left to set,
resulting in pieces that are more sculp-
turally fluid than sawn-and-fixed join-
ery usually achieves.
Ross grew up just east of Invernesson
the north-east coast.In the 1980s, he
attended Napier College in Edinburgh,
where a degree in industrial design led
him to London to work for Bissell, spe-
cialists in plastic domestic products. He
found the remote production process
unsatisfying, so he retrained in craft
making at Rycotewood Furniture Cen-
tre in Oxfordshire, where he started
“thinking through making”. He found
that the living timber, with its grain,
swell and twists, instructed him inhow
to shape and finish it.
In 1992 Ross set up aworkshop in Net-
tlebed, Oxfordshire, with two associatesThe living timber, with its
grain, swell and twists,
instructed himintohowtoshape and finish it
A Scot
who
pines
for oak
I
n a back street of Aberfeldy in cen-
tral Scotland, Angus Ross makes
outdoor furniture in oak. It might
be an odd choice of material — oak
trees are less common in Scotland
than England, and Ross lives in the
heartland of the Scots Pine, the most
widely distributed fir tree in the world.
Aberfeldy’s woods were celebrated by
the poet Robert Burns, but those were
birches, not oaks.
Long before Burns was born, Scottish
oak panelling was replaced with com-
mon fir, and oak was imported from
Germany and the Baltics. But locally,
there are still some oak-rich woodlands,
and Ross manages a 55-acre parcel for
his own supply. He says it is worth the
effort — and the wait of years while they
grow — because local hardwood is far
better suited than pine to bemade into
outdoor furniture.Artisans| The Scottish countryside
is replete with fir trees yet Angus Ross
turns to local oak to craft outdoor
furniture. ByJonathan Foyle
(Above) Angus
Ross in his
workshop in
Aberfeldy; (top)
wooden parts
Photographs by Robert
Ormerod for the FT(Far left)
Resilience
Bench, £5,950;
(left) Arc Bench
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