WONDERS IN WOOD
Artisan expresses his love of toys
Inside Edmund Tucker’s head is a world of wonder.
The Albuquerque-based artist takes the ideas from his mind and carefully cuts and carves them to life.
For the owner of Tucker Woodshop, the ideas have no boundaries.
The execution, of course, does.
“I’ve always enjoyed making toys out of wood,” he says.
“I try to find ways to make each item high-quality and sustainable.”
His business motto is simple: “No paint. No plastic. No batteries.”
And most important, each item is made out of recycled or reclaimed wood.
Tucker is one of the 157 artisans participating in the New Mexico Artisan Market. The second annual event will be held from Friday, Nov. 29, through Sunday, Dec. 1, at Hotel Albuquerque, near Old Town.
The event is a three-day shopping experience that honors New Mexico’s tradition of a community marketplace by providing a high-quality event bringing together artisans and art lovers.
“In days past, the community would come to the marketplace to connect with, and purchase from, one another,” said Chris O’Donnell, creative director for the Sawmill District Development and for the New Mexico Artisan Market. “We need to continue this tradition. When you are face to face with the person that has traded their time and talent to create something for you it creates a human connection. When you use your buying power to support local business, you support our state.”
For hours out of the day, Tucker can be found in his workshop, just outside his Northeast Heights home.
Inside are all the tools needed to create his pieces: puzzles, building blocks, wooden dolls, 3D chessboards and more than 60 wands.
“Everyone loves a magic wand,” he says. “I started with only offering a few. It’s grown to more than 60 different types of wood. There are people who put their hand over the wand display and let the wand pick them. It’s pretty cool.”
Ideas for the chessboard have bounced around in Tucker’s head since he was 12.
Tired of playing chess on the standard flat board, Tucker wanted to add dimension to the game.
“It’s the same game every time,” he says of playing on
a flat board. “So I developed a way to make it more fun.”
Tucker build a board with 16 different heights that can be arranged in various ways.
“You can make a downward slope or arrange it differently,” he says. “I used to glue the pieces of the board together. It wasn’t until a customer at one of the markets suggested that I put magnets into them to make them easier to manipulate. I’m making new layouts for the trays. It’s come a long way from when I made my first one out of paper when I was 12. Adding magnets was the final piece in making them perfect.”
Tucker grew up in Illinois and found himself messing around with any tool he found in his parents’ barn.
“I don’t know where the artistic creativity came from; it just sort of happened,” he says.
After years of working for the state of Illinois, he and his wife decided to move to Albuquerque about four years ago.
“She’s a nurse, and she asked me what I wanted to do with the next phase of my life,” he says. “Working my last job sucked all the artistic creativity out of me. I told her I wanted to pursue Tucker Woodshop. She’s a big part of the business. She helps me whenever she can.”
Although he makes plenty of wonders, Tucker says he is most proud of his wooden dolls.
“These are my trademark items,” he says with a smile. “I want to be the guy that makes wooden dolls.”
Each doll is made of two different types of wood. Each is sanded and varnished, and then Tucker adds beeswax.
“All of the dolls are hollow,” he says. “The smaller ones, I will put granite gravel from the Sandia Mountains.”
To add to the whimsical element of the dolls, Tucker designed and creates Adirondack chairs.
“Everyone stops when they see the dolls,” he says. “I had a customer who asked me to create an entire family of dolls.”
Depending on the item, prices run from $7 through $300 for the 3D chess board with magnets.
Tucker says the ideas for new product lines or updates to the existing lines come from his children.
“I’m a father of three,” he says. “I design and develop from what I want to see them playing with or what I think they should be playing with.”