Mastercrafts - Charles Hoopers chair

Charles has kindly given me permission to post a photo of his finished chair as the production did not show his finished product.

In my opinion it rivals Toms as a fine work of craft and I would be proud to own such a lovely item.

What a lovely chair!

It's good to see it finished, it must have been nice to be able to complete it to his satisfaction without time constraints. I also think that perhaps it would have been nice they could have found a way to shown it finished as an addendum to the end of the prog when it went out. Having said that, for all three contributors to have produced what they did with such rapid & intense training is extrordinary.

Such is always the problem with producing a TV programme, though....all sorts of excellent stuff always ends up on the cutting room floor.....

sad, really.

Wow - lovely chair!

Mrs C

Is this the programme where the lass was obviously struggling with a malet that was too heavy...just for the pleasure of making her not suceed? We can't see the programme here but all the green wood bodgers are humming about it. It is really sad that there seemed to have to be a "drama" element too it. Isn't watching and listening to a skilled craftsman exciting enough?

To be honest I found it hard to believe that it was too heavy for her, but rather that her apparent general ineptitude was akin to performance anxiety. When left alone to get on with things she clearly coped better otherwise she would never have have managed to create the child's chair to the standard that she did under her own steam at all in the remaining time. Given the added competitive element I *can* easily see how being the sole woman a among a bunch of guys who are clearly more confident, adept and yes, perhaps arguably more talented would find the environment, being filmed and the task itself intimidating - you might even say that the odds were somewhat stacked from the start. I do wonder if things would have been different with more women participants, or even a female tutor.

That was certainly an unfortunate clip, Sarah soon got the hang of cleaving by trying out a variety of tools to find ones that suited her, it's one good way to learn, but perhaps not with 2.7 million people watching this learning curve! It is undoubtedly intimidating being the only woman/man in a group but Sarah coped incredibly well and has gone from strength to strength with her work starting from a huge disadvantage of relatively little experience. This inexperience in itself is no problem - I teach many more novice women than men and have as nearly as many women teachers working here as men. It would be very wrong to assume its a mans world and Sarah is just one good example of this. Six weeks edited into less than one hour - that must have been a difficult task too. It is very gratifying to see how inspired everybody has been by the series & I very much hope the momentum is maintained.

Good to hear the more detailed side of it Guy.

I noticed on Mike Abbots web site that he is now fully booked up for this year because of the programme :cheers: