As we prepared to open doors to our new Burlington Arcade Boutique earlier this month, we sought out the skillset of local Scottish craftspeople to help make the ‘House’ a home. Amongst the talent was sculptor, Oliver Spendley. Based in the Highlands, Oliver spends his days perfecting his craft in creating Totem-style furniture and sculptures using natural, sustainably sourced materials. We chat more about the project he created for our new store and the inspiration behind it, whilst learning more about his venture.

How did you get into your craft?

I started out my foray into woodwork by traditional boat building – that’s what I was trained in. From there, I've done all kinds of different types of woodwork. I had a furniture business on the South Coast of England, New Forest to be exact, making more traditional pieces – like dining tables. Then, about five years ago, I made the move up here to the Highlands. So basically, from one coast to the other. Over the last three years or so, I've been focused on more sculptural pieces incorporating local stone.

Tell us more about the materials you use and how you source them.

Everything is from the Highlands, from the local beaches and remote places. I’m very much in touch with gathering materials. So, it's not just like going and buying from a shop, this sort of thing. The process starts with me gathering what it is I'm going to be using in the in the work. So, for instance, the Burlington Arcade table, that was a stone as found in an inlet.

But yeah, it's basically just being out in, in nature, and being absorbed in all of that gathering. Understanding what I'm going to be making - a sculpture or a piece of furniture and what I’ll need – and that’s how it begins. I’ll look to source local timber, too.

How did you make the transition into Sculpting?

The transition is hard to actually put my finger on. Sculpture wasn't always something I wanted to do. It wasn't like I'll at some point I'll do sculpture. I went from the boat building into wooden tables and that felt like an easy transition because it was furniture and it was something I wanted to have a business in.

In Scotland, that the whole sculptural element came in and I don't really know where from. It just felt appropriate and was a response to living here and the being immersed here, I think, and working with what I had to work with. So it was a bit of a necessity. I don't know. It's actually a hard thing to answer. It's very much inspired and sort of incorporating where I'm living. It’s very mountainous here. It's very wild here. And I think that's made its way into the work in the form of stone, but also the sculptural and sort of physical elements of it, too.

How would you describe your aesthetic?

It’s hard to maybe say. It's not like I'm following a thread of tradition or a genre of sculpture or furniture. It feels like it's very much more a personal response to where I am if that makes sense. Like if I was, maybe if I was to have gone somewhere else, it would have been it would have been a response to that place.

What was your brief for the Burlington Arcade project?

The team had seen my work in a gallery called Bard in Edinburgh, which is probably the most significant representation of my work. The team were interested in the idea of using stone for the table. There wasn't any sort of steer of the look. I was given dimensions, but I was given free rein – the reason I was approached was because they wanted me to respond to the space and create something. With Burlington Arcade, my thinking was how I could bring as much Wildness of Scotland into a luxury environment in a way that's done in keeping with the brand. That's how I approached it.

Tell us about the table.

The bespoke table is made solely from Scottish Highland materials. Scottish Burl Elm to create the base of the sculptural leg along with Lewisian Gneiss stone from the North Coast forms a totemic sculpture, a fusion of raw, robust and refined elements.
Burl Elm tree creates the leg and a live edge Elm (Burl Ash) top for the surface of the table. The natural edge has been charred black to create a striking contrast between the outline of the tree's original shape and the highly finished surface of the beautiful grain of the timber tabletop.
The process takes about a month. Searching for the rock in the wilderness waterways and sourcing timber from small local sawmills is how it starts. Watching the piece come together is deeply rewarding. Carefully scribing the stone to emerge though the surface of the table is a long and delicate process. Heavy and hand crafted from start to finish. Other features include hand carved growth rings and figured elm butterfly joints. The piece embodies the Scottish wilderness in all its beauty.