I was lucky enough recently to be given a beautiful piece of wood by my neighbour. My first thought was to create a staff (albeit a little short) from the stunning shaft of, nine years seasoned, holly. But the longer I looked at it, the more I felt it, the more I was sure that was wrong. It didn't want to be a staff.
I feel very strongly about working with the spirit of the wood and this one had very definite ideas about what it wanted! I spent night after night just sitting with the holly, running my hands along its satin smoothness; taking in all the detail of the tight grain and knobbly features and slowly an idea took shape.
When I first said I was going to make a wand my wife looked at me with absolute horror. I had over four feet of beautiful holly and all I was going to do was make a wand! I think she thought I was mad. (Hmmmmm, she'd be right about that. But that aside...) Yet this wasn't going to be any ordinary wand. This piece of holly had something special in mind.
And this is the result.
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| Holly Wand- Sheathed |
I've never made a wand with its own sheath before and it was quite a challenge to hollow out the shaft to take the wand smoothly but I think it was worth the effort.
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| Holly Wand- unsheathed |
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