It never ceases to amaze me on my travels through other makers’ worlds just how creative and inventive we can all be just using our minds, our hands and the mk1 eyeball.

We’re generally familiar with oak for making whisky barrels just as we are with copper for the stills, stone for the buildings and malting barley for the mash. How often, though, do we spare a thought for the wider use of wood in the whole process of making whisky?  

However you choose your furniture, its design is the first step in its evolution.  The design should deliver both the practicalities of function as well as the less tangible matters of how it looks and catches the eye.

Listen to Mike being interviewed for an episode of BBC Radio Scotland’s ‘Out of Doors’ programme. 

The way we waste things such as food, clothing and furniture for no good reason is quite rightly coming under increasing scrutiny. 

Diseased trees can still be turned into fine furniture providing they have not been left or kept alive so long that they have started to rot in the ground.