Ross takes on all types of commissions but specialises in hand-built kitchens and outdoor oak furniture and now enjoys a waiting list for his work. Here, he explains how he got started:
“How I started out in making is a nice circular story and this chisel comes into it.
This chisel belonged to my Dad, who was a cabinet maker. He came from a long line of Ketteridges who were all craftspeople. His father and father’s father (and his eight brothers!) were carpenters, stonemasons and bricklayers at a time when each deserved the term “master craftsman”. I had always liked this, that perhaps I might have inherited some of the genes of these old masters.
Dad was a cabinet maker, and when at home he was always making things. And I loved it. I loved watching him, the smell of the wood and the sounds the tools made. As long as I can remember I was always making things. Over the years Dad gave me, from an early age, if not an apprenticeship, a very good start, that would have enabled me to do it as a career if I’d so wished.
I did cut myself on this chisel, but only once!* Dad created a permissible environment to learn, he let me make mistakes even if they hurt! I got good at it and always did it as a hobby. On leaving school, I was good academically, so he urged me not to do woodwork, but go and get, as he put it, a proper job! I ended up doing a business degree and pursued a 20-year career in sales and marketing, travelling a lot, and seeing the world.
If people asked me back then, ‘what would you do if you won the lottery?’, my stock answer was that I would do this, I would get a workshop and design and build furniture. I’ve always loved drawing, painting and designing and making things and I’ve always thought these were my real strengths.
In 2007, we had an unexpected opportunity: my work at the time had become really stressful and all the time working away became incompatible with family life. I often talked about wishing I could just stop and do woodwork instead. It was my wife who said, either shut up about it or let’s see if together we can do this. It coincided with Clare starting a new job as a doctor at Borders General Hospital.
So we moved from Tyneside to Melrose in the Scottish Borders. On her recce visit, Clare found a leaflet for Wood School, the former name of Real Wood Studios, that said “New makers wanted, we’re fairly open about qualifications you need”. I started a three-month trial and I’ve been here ever since, 18 years and counting.
The sad part of the story is that my Dad died at the same age I am now, 61. Part of his job as a carpenter was working with asbestos. Say no more. So he missed this seismic event – me quitting the rat race and doing what he used to do – by eight years.
Dad was always one of these people who wouldn’t give you false praise. I would be so proud of something I’d made, then he would examine it and say “it’s alright, but you can improve on this, that and this.” Which is how I judge my own work now, never quite satisfied; not such a bad thing for a cabinetmaker!
He didn’t get to see it, but I still use some of his hand tools, including his chisels. I’ve got this little picture of him when he was 21 and in the RAF, looking down on my workbench, so I feel that he’s always watching me.
I wish he could see me now – I’m quite proud that it was my destiny after all to eventually take up the Ketteridge “master craftsman” baton!”
*For the sake of full disclosure, I have to admit that I actually cut myself on this chisel a second time, last year, approximately 50 years later – well, like my Dad said, if we aren’t making mistakes, we aren’t learning!
