40 Years beside the Bench
Betty Norbury
My role in Ian’s professional life has been as an enabler. Giving him space to develop, and initially to hang in there long enough to become established. Not easy with three children and a mortgage. He was a painter when I met him and I qualified to do no more than basic office work.
Our first home £4,175 was purchased by Ian taking a real job for 6 whole weeks and my father being guarantor. We turned a bedroom into a studio and he did his first carving on the kitchen table – a devils head from a bit of builders pine.
We moved to Popes Hill in the Forest of Dean and Ian enjoyed the luxury of a draughty old stone shed with a leaky corrugated roof, but he’d been bitten by the carving bug – encouraged by John Havard, the technician at teacher training college where he had gone to study to be an art teacher after a failed exhibition of Gloucester scenes for National Heritage Year.
He would hitch hike 20 miles each way to college in Cheltenham, come home, play games with and read to the children and then go into his cold little den and carve. He taught himself with old Victorian books how to make the chisels a part of his hands as his pencils and brushes have always been. We were poor and wood was scarce – He would completely cover his piece of wood with traditional patterns, egg and dart etc. – plane it all off and start again, and again, and again. His technical virtuosity owes much to these hours of dogged practice.
Before he left college he wanted to be a woodcarver! And I thought we were going to get a regular teachers income!!
We moved to Cheltenham where most of the antique dealers traded and Ian started to work for them, copying decorative bits and pieces, making up sets of chairs etc. and just when the income could be relied upon he wanted to carve his own ideas. Now I could no longer take a back seat – when you can’t beat them – join them!
Our premises had not only a home, but a workshop and a shop which we had rented out to an antique dealer. Now we changed the shop into a gallery and I became a gallery director. Absolutely crucial to this stage of Ian’s career was Malcolm Winlow, our bank manager, they don’t make them like that any more! To make an impact Ian had to have exhibitions, which needed time to gather a body of work together and money to organise and stage. Malcolm kept the wolf from the door and ensured the children ate.
In this way Ian has had the space to develop, pushing all the time to excite his audience and clients alike. And I slowly learned through experience how to market his work.
We lived and worked in Cheltenham for 30 years, for many of those I organised exhibitions not only for Ian, but encouraged by Ian for the UK’s leading furniture makers and I wrote three books on the subject as well as a book on marketing. I would say my own skills were developed out of necessity and a basic grounding in common sense.
When Ian started carving, there were no books, tools were hard to come by, wood even harder – In the UK particularly Ian turned woodcarving on its head. Now 40 years on – he is a household name to other woodcarvers – he has always shared his knowledge freely and willingly, writing nine books, making eight DVDs and teaching all over the world – all the time working towards exhibitions with new ideas and techniques. The statistics on his website demonstrates that he has followers from every country.
It’s been a roller coaster ride of feast and famine, hard work, world travel and meeting lots of really nice people. One I’ve been privileged to share.
When people say he's really lucky to be so clever – I think of the old adage:
The harder he works – the luckier he becomes!
Betty Norbury September 2011
Betty Norbury
My role in Ian’s professional life has been as an enabler. Giving him space to develop, and initially to hang in there long enough to become established. Not easy with three children and a mortgage. He was a painter when I met him and I qualified to do no more than basic office work.
Our first home £4,175 was purchased by Ian taking a real job for 6 whole weeks and my father being guarantor. We turned a bedroom into a studio and he did his first carving on the kitchen table – a devils head from a bit of builders pine.
We moved to Popes Hill in the Forest of Dean and Ian enjoyed the luxury of a draughty old stone shed with a leaky corrugated roof, but he’d been bitten by the carving bug – encouraged by John Havard, the technician at teacher training college where he had gone to study to be an art teacher after a failed exhibition of Gloucester scenes for National Heritage Year.
He would hitch hike 20 miles each way to college in Cheltenham, come home, play games with and read to the children and then go into his cold little den and carve. He taught himself with old Victorian books how to make the chisels a part of his hands as his pencils and brushes have always been. We were poor and wood was scarce – He would completely cover his piece of wood with traditional patterns, egg and dart etc. – plane it all off and start again, and again, and again. His technical virtuosity owes much to these hours of dogged practice.
Before he left college he wanted to be a woodcarver! And I thought we were going to get a regular teachers income!!
We moved to Cheltenham where most of the antique dealers traded and Ian started to work for them, copying decorative bits and pieces, making up sets of chairs etc. and just when the income could be relied upon he wanted to carve his own ideas. Now I could no longer take a back seat – when you can’t beat them – join them!
Our premises had not only a home, but a workshop and a shop which we had rented out to an antique dealer. Now we changed the shop into a gallery and I became a gallery director. Absolutely crucial to this stage of Ian’s career was Malcolm Winlow, our bank manager, they don’t make them like that any more! To make an impact Ian had to have exhibitions, which needed time to gather a body of work together and money to organise and stage. Malcolm kept the wolf from the door and ensured the children ate.
In this way Ian has had the space to develop, pushing all the time to excite his audience and clients alike. And I slowly learned through experience how to market his work.
We lived and worked in Cheltenham for 30 years, for many of those I organised exhibitions not only for Ian, but encouraged by Ian for the UK’s leading furniture makers and I wrote three books on the subject as well as a book on marketing. I would say my own skills were developed out of necessity and a basic grounding in common sense.
When Ian started carving, there were no books, tools were hard to come by, wood even harder – In the UK particularly Ian turned woodcarving on its head. Now 40 years on – he is a household name to other woodcarvers – he has always shared his knowledge freely and willingly, writing nine books, making eight DVDs and teaching all over the world – all the time working towards exhibitions with new ideas and techniques. The statistics on his website demonstrates that he has followers from every country.
It’s been a roller coaster ride of feast and famine, hard work, world travel and meeting lots of really nice people. One I’ve been privileged to share.
When people say he's really lucky to be so clever – I think of the old adage:
The harder he works – the luckier he becomes!
Betty Norbury September 2011