Can this extraordinary house be saved for the nation?
The late artist and craftsman Tim Stead made every part of the interior of The Steading, the family home in the Borders he shared with his wife Maggy and their children until he died in 2000 aged just 48. Now Maggy has decided to sell up and a trust has been established to try and purchase it before it goes on the open market. By Susan Mansfield
Visitors to The Steading, the home created in the Scottish Borders by artist and craftsman Tim Stead, tend to behave in the same way. Ushered into what looks like an ordinary farmhouse, they stop in their tracks.
Warm wood grains glow from every corner: the fireplace, the chairs, the kitchen units. Stead, celebrated both as a sculptor and furniture maker, spent 20 years creating what is both a family home and a masterpiece. Everything is hand-made, from four poster beds and staircases to lightpulls and toilet seats.
“There are 30 doors, no two of them the same,” says Maggy Stead Lenert, Tim’s wife, who has lived in the house since Tim died in 2000, aged just 48. “He had this belief that everything you surround yourself with, from the toilet seat to the bed to the table, has to be visually stimulating. You don’t go and buy from a catalogue, you make it yourself.”
Now, however, Maggy has made the difficult decision to sell the house, and a campaign has been mounted to save it for the nation. The Tim Stead Trust has been formed, aiming to buy the house from Maggy (who has agreed to sell it to them for less than market value) and to open it to the public as a celebration of his work. But the Trust faces a race against time to raise sufficient funds before the house has to be sold on the open market, risking the loss of its unique features.
“The house really was his masterpiece, it encompasses everything that he was,” says Nichola Fletcher, chairwoman of the Tim Stead Trust, who is hoping they can reach their fundraising total of £450,000 in the next two months. “When you see the house he made himself, you realise what an extraordinary artist he was. Everybody who walks in is blown away by it. Prince Phillip came down a few years ago and loved it so much he asked to come back again. We would like to share it with everybody.”
Tim Stead occupies a unique place in Scotland’s cultural landscape as a sculptor and furniture maker who made no distinction between his work as an artist and as a craftsman. His furniture celebrated the grains and natural features of the wood, inspiring a generation of makers, and he embraced ideas of local sourcing and sustainability long before they were fashionable.
His most famous works include the interior of Glasgow’s Cafe Gandolfi, the North Sea Oil Industries Memorial Chapel in Aberdeen’s St Nicholas’ Kirk (commissioned shortly after the Piper Alpha disaster) and the National Museum of Scotland’s Millennium Clock, completed just before his death from cancer.
Tim was born in Cheshire and studied art at Nottingham Trent University then at Glasgow School of Art. Early sculptural works made use of reclaimed wood from wharfs and former industrial buildings being demolished. The Cafe Gandolfi interior was an early commission which helped put his name on the map.
Tim and Maggy met in Glasgow at the end of the 1970s and, wanting to live in the countryside, bought the farm near Blainslie in the Borders in 1980. Tim immediately started to add wooden fittings and furniture. After their children, Sam and Emma, were born,
“When you see the house he made himself, you realise what an artist he was. Everybody who walks in is blown away by it”
features were simply added to meet their needs as they grew.
Maggy says: “Nothing was planned on paper, it answered the needs as they occurred in the family. It allowed Tim to be extremely creative. Because he was a trained sculptor, not a trained woodworker, it meant he had enormous freedom to do what he wanted the way he wanted. As a result it is quite stunning, very special.
“It’s not just bits of woodwork, it’s the whole philosophy behind Tim’s creation, deep-rooted in all sorts of environmental and philosophical ideas, way ahead of his time. It only became a work of art the moment Tim died, before that the house was for the family to live in.”
She said the decision to sell the property had been tough. “It’s very, very difficult, but we have reached a point where there is no choice. It is hard, it’s a loss. If the Trust can buy the house, that takes away so much pain because they are going to look after it, and carry on with the legacy that Tim left behind, bringing in people who will be inspired by the whole environment.”
The outcome everyone fears is that, if the Trust fails to raise the money, the house could be sold on the open market and Tim’s unique interior removed. Experts from Historic Environment Scotland have recommended that the building be given an A listing, which would protect the interior, but the consultation is still ongoing.
“I think it’s unique,” says writer and art critic Giles Sutherland, the author of two books on Stead. “There are very few interiors in Scotland where the work has been conceived and made by the same person, and where the material has been sourced locally; there is a close link between all of that.
“I think his sculpture is of very high merit, and I think in time his reputation will grow. The work feels to me tactile, atavistic, archetypal, it appeals to different senses, the forms are related to the human body, or to boats. I think it makes a statement about the interconnectedness of things and the relationship of humanity to nature.”
Having worked with reclaimed wood long before anyone had heard of ‘up-cycling’, Tim’s move to Blainslie coincided with the outbreak of Dutch elm disease, which meant large amounts of elm became readily available. He then committed to working with native hardwoods rather than the more popular imported timbers.
When a woodland came up for sale near Lauder, Tim and a handful of others got together to raise money to buy it (in Tim’s case by making and selling 365 wooden axe heads). Wooplaw Community Woodland became the first community woodland in the UK and continues to be enjoyed by locals and visitors.
The Tim Stead Trust aims to celebrate this legacy, and hopes that acquiring the Steading will be the beginning of a larger programme which will including securing his archive and collect other examples of his work. The house would host workshops and artist residencies as well as being open to school children, students and – as much as possible – the general public.
Nichola Fletcher says: “Tim Stead is the late 20th century Charles Rennie Mackintosh. The home he created for his family is akin to the house Mackintosh created in Glasgow for his wife. Historic Environment Scotland considers it to be of national and international importance – that vindicates what we’ve been trying to shout about for the last four years.
“People don’t realise that when he started no one was doing this sort of thing. When people see furniture with flowing lines and beautiful pieces of wood, they don’t know it all came from Stead. We feel he’s a very important person, and we need to remind them.
“It’s been hard trying to raise money, with austerity and Brexit going on. Having said that, we know there are benefactors around for whom the money we’re needing to save the house is really just loose change. It’s just a question of how to reach them and help them realise how important it is.”