More Than a Crest: The Soul Behind the Wood

There is a particular silence in the workshop when a new design lands on my desk. It is not an empty silence, but a full one, humming with possibility. Today, that design was the crest for Tottenham Hotspur’s Europa League victory. It sits on the light box, a crisp, bold outline waiting for its soul to be carved. My mind does not first go to the football, to the roar of the crowd or the lift of a trophy. It goes to the wood. Always to the wood.

This piece will be born from a slab of solid hardwood. Not just any timber, but the kind that has a story you can feel in your palms. We work with Scottish oak, with the deeply charactered planks from old whisky barrels, but for this commission, the grain is different, the tone perhaps warmer. Each board arrives with its own history, its own map of knots and ripples. That knot, a tight, whorled eye in the timber, is not a flaw to be hidden. It is a character in the story. It will become the very centre of the crest, a natural focal point that no laser design could ever predict. My job is not to impose a shape upon the wood, but to work with its own spirit, to let its natural drama play a part in the final piece.

The process begins with the laser. There is a precise, almost clinical music to the cutter as it traces the lines of the crest, etching deep into the fibre. But that is only the first verse of the poem. The magic, the true heart of our work, happens after the machine falls silent. This is where my hands take over. The resin, a deep, jet-black or a vibrant club colour, must be mixed with a patience that borders on meditation. The consistency has to be just right. Too thin and it will sink into the wood’s pores without definition. Too thick and it will not flow into the finest lines of the design. We pour it, we coax it, we sometimes even paint it in with a fine brush for the tiniest elements. This resin fill is the colour that defines the shape, but it is the wood that gives it depth. Where the laser has cut deep, the resin pools and catches the light, creating a three-dimensional landscape. The surrounding wood, sanded smooth by hand but never stripped of its identity, provides the contrast, the raw, organic canvas that makes the resin sing.

I think of the person who will eventually hang this on their wall. They are not buying a mass-produced sticker or a printed poster. They are acquiring a piece of a process. They are taking home the memory of that specific board’s grain, the particular way the black resin met the pale wood on a Tuesday morning in March. The slight imperfection in the laser cut, the microscopic bubble trapped forever in the resin, the way the natural oil from our hands has already begun to deepen the surface finish, these are the signatures of authenticity. This is not an object. It is an artefact of attention.

This Tottenham crest, celebrating a Europa League victory, is a symbol of triumph and passion. And so is the act of making it. There is triumph in finding the perfect board, in the moment the resin fills the engraving just so, in the final rub of the food-safe oil that brings out the warmth of the timber. The passion is in the refusal to rush, to let the materials speak. It is in knowing that a whisky barrel lid, once used to mature a spirit, now carries a different kind of spirit, the pride of a fan, the memory of a match, the love for a club. We are not just making wall art. We are translating emotion into material. We are giving a tangible form to belonging.

When the piece is done, we wipe it down one last time. The crest is complete. The victory is commemorated. But the true victory, for me, is here in the quiet. It is in the knowledge that a piece of Scottish timber, worked by hand with care, is now ready to travel. It carries the scent of sawdust and linseed oil, the memory of the workshop’s light, and the unique fingerprint of the wood itself. It is a humble object, perhaps. But it is honest. And in a world of so much noise, that honest connection to material, to place, and to human hands, that is the most valuable thing we have to offer.

That piece will soon be on its way. But its story, the real one, started long before the design was drawn. It started in a forest, in a cooper’s yard, in the steady hands of a maker who believes that what we surround ourselves with should matter. That’s the only creed I work by.