Out of the woodwork
His friends and clients include artists, aristocrats, rock stars and royalty, yet his car struggles to make it through its MOT. Mark Palmer meets Colin Mantripp, the master woodcarver who pushes boundaries
The Queen, Sir Mick Jagger, Sir elton John, eton College, the late Sir hugh Casson, Sheikh hamdan bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Roman Abramovich: they’ve all been clients of Colin Mantripp at one time or another. Oh, and let’s not forget Mel B (better known as ‘Scary Spice’, as in the Spice Girls), who first hired master carver Colin to do some simple restoration work at her palatial home and ended up commissioning him to make 16 bishop’s throne-style diningroom chairs and a whole new wood-carved staircase. Starry stuff.
It is, therefore, reassuring to find Colin operating from a ramshackle, 250-yearold rented barn down a single-track lane in the Chilterns near Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire. The ‘office’ amounts to a laptop on a bashed-about desk and assorted cuts of wood, sculptures and metalwork that give new meaning to the description higgledy-piggledy.
Outside sits Colin’s K-reg 1993 Mercedes convertible, which somehow manages to pass its MOT, despite parts dangling precariously from it and the passenger door creaking as if pleading for a slug of WD-40. Colin himself wears a blue smock with deep pockets. Throw in his long, dark hair and open face, and he could be passed off as the abbot of a little-known religious order.
This is broadly fitting, given his approach to the commercial world. ‘I don’t really know how money works,’ Colin confesses. ‘We had someone working here who always came in late, but, when this was pointed out, I said I was more interested in what he does when he’s here than whether he arrives on time.’
Working with this man must look impressive on your CV, if you want to forge a life as a wood carver or sculptor. he’s an engaging character with a meticulous eye, at the peak
of his redoubtable talents. Customers of the Lillyfee Woodcarving Studio, as it’s called, habitually wait up to a year for work on any particular project to begin—and what they end up with might be dramatically different to what they had first imagined.
‘I like playing with things and giving people a surprise,’ Colin explains. ‘A nice couple who live in a bungalow asked me to make what they called a “wow door” for them and I ended up doing the whole house. By the end, I’d turned it into a Gothic hunting lodge.’
Born in Buckinghamshire in 1957, his father was a hairdresser and his grandfather on his mother’s side was Frank Hudson, who set up a successful furniture-making business after the Second World War and to whom Colin was apprenticed at the age of 16. ‘All I really did at school was make things. As soon as I got home, I started cutting up cardboard boxes and turning them into pieces of furniture. I had a pottery teacher who said I made more things in one lesson than the rest did in a term.’
After nearly seven years working with his grandfather, Colin got itchy feet: ‘We were making top-end repro furniture and, honestly, I got bored of it. I wanted to visit some of the world’s classic sites and, before long, I found myself touring Crete on a motorcycle, where I met the artist John Craxton and stayed with him for six months.’
Craxton, whose work included illustrating books by Patrick Leigh Fermor, had moved to the Greek island in the early 1970s. He became a big influence on Colin, encouraging him to take a job on the island with a sculptor and furniture maker who worked mainly with churches.
A similarly serendipitous encounter awaited Colin when he returned home a year later, towards the end of 1979. One morning, he was admiring the wood-panelled lodge at the entrance to Lord Burnham’s Hall Barn estate
‘I like a challenge and believe that struggling with something is good’
in Beaconsfield when His Lordship came through the gates and rolled down the window of his car. Before Lord Burnham had a chance to proffer a question, Colin asked him if he wanted the lodge restored and, within hours, the two men were sitting in the Hall Barn library with a glass of whisky.
They came to an agreement. Colin would operate from a workshop owned by Lord Burnham in Beaconsfield in return for 20 hours of work a week on the lodge.
It was a perfect arrangement, not least because the workshop was attached to a carpentry shop, with all equipment to hand. What’s more, Lord Burnham and Craxton were both well connected. Work started to roll in, not least at Sutton Place, the Grade Ilisted Tudor house in Surrey built by Sir Richard Weston and owned variously by John Paul Getty and Stanley Seeger. Seeger hired Colin to make everything from carved pelmets in the bedroom to frames for his huge collection of Picasso paintings.
In the early 1990s, Colin moved his workshop to Lillyfee, which is also owned by the Burnham family. He now employs up to 16 people—who have the use of more than 700 carving tools and are kept warm in winter by sawdust and shavings generated from their work—as well as running woodcarving and antique-restoration classes and giving regular lectures at the V&A.
It was towards the end of the 1990s that Colin was asked to make a plaque for The Queen to present to the people of New Zealand during one of her overseas tours. It was to be carved from Windsor Great Park timber and to a specific design, but Colin wasn’t happy with the quality of the wood and felt the design insufficiently regal. The palace supplied him with different timber and Colin set about his task, producing something far more flamboyant than originally envisaged.
He waited nervously for a response, until a letter arrived from The Queen’s equerry thanking him for his ‘care and diligence’ and stressing how delighted Her Majesty was with it.
‘I like a challenge and believe that struggling with something is good. Without a struggle, you can’t move forward,’ says Colin. ‘I’m fortunate that I love what I do. I just wish I was a bit younger, because, when I started, there were quite a few talented carvers. That’s not the case today. Good woodcarvers could be the rock stars of the future.’