She’s a doctor by day but come nightfall (and days off), Ellie Wernham swaps her superhero white coat for a workshop, furthering her passion and talent for woodworking.
“I come from a long line of woodworkers, so there were always bits and pieces around the house growing up,” she tells Verve. “My grandad Geoff built boats, and my two uncles are woodworkers. My nana – my transgender dad who I now call ‘nana’ – was a woodworking teacher and makes the most incredible things. My son has grown up with beautifully crafted toys, never had anything plastic.”
The Wernham family’s creative credentials are further enhanced thanks to Ellie’s mum, a ceramic artist, and her architect twin brother who designed her work-in-progress workshop in the backyard. Also, Ellie chuckles, she fell for her partner, Anil, upon seeing his impressive workshop. “When I have my new workshop up and running, I’d love to host some women’s woodworking get-togethers.”
I ask if there is a general trend for more women getting involved.
“I feel like there is, more and more women woodworkers are popping up in design magazines making beautiful work”.
Though in the day-to-day, fellow female woodworkers are harder to find.
“I had a mutual friend send me an email wanting to connect with a fellow female woodworker, which was so cool! We had this hilarious afternoon of eating cheese and drinking wine and discussing lathes and chisels and our favourite wood oils.”
Ellie says that she was attracted to woodworking as an escape from work.
“Medicine is a wonderful and rewarding job, but it is incredibly demanding and high pressure. The stakes are high, it’s emotionally charged, and being in the workshop allows me to really switch off from it all.”
She first went down to Dunedin to spend some time with Nana, learning how to turn on the lathe.
“When I have my new workshop up and running, I’d love to host some women’s woodworking get-togethers.”
“Much to her frustration, I was almost as good as her very quickly!”
Ellie describes the “magical and meditative process” of watching a lump of wood take shape before your eyes.
“With wood, it’s a very organic process. If you’re not too attached to the outcome – which was especially true while I was learning – you can just let whatever forms, form. I’m not someone who does things half-heartedly, I’ve spent hours and hours in my workshop, I can get a bit obsessive!”
Working with such sharp objects and weighty materials obviously requires 100% focus.
“It is reasonably dangerous – the slightest slip of the chisel can easily ruin whatever you’re making, while wood turning can cause serious injury.”
The woodworker points to various items she’s created around her home including chairs, trinkets, and chopping boards. There’s a particularly gorgeous stool – a replica of the Ray Eames Time Life Stool – that’s been fashioned from walnut wood.
“In the last few months, I’ve become more interested in traditional furniture-making,” Ellie goes on. “I’m not a designer, but I love design and have been really going deep with my research. I found the original 1960s plans for that stool online. The skill behind making something seemingly so simple fascinates me.
“Another really cool part of the process is finding the wood. I recently made some beautiful little vases from a piece of beech that had fallen into a river on my partner’s family farm up north. It had all of these mushrooms on it. When fungi grow on wood, the spores create beautiful patterns within the grain called spalting.”
Walnut is her favourite wood to work with.
“The colour is beautiful, and the grain is amazing,” adds Ellie. “That’s another meditative part, getting rough-sawn timber to dressed lengths – as you sand, you’re watching the grain of the timber reveal knots and insect marks. It’s mesmerising.”
Words – Jamie Christian Deplaces
