Lou Fuller - Lead Tutor

Lou is our Full-time Lead Tutor here at the school, teaching terms 1 & 2 of the full-time Furniture Making Programme as well as teaching short courses throughout the rest of year. Lou oversees all of our Visiting Tutors, as well as our Workshop Assistants, keeping everything humming with grace and good humour.

Lou completed a degree in Furniture Design & Craftsmanship in the UK and moved to New Zealand in 2006. She set up and taught a furniture making programme for at-risk youth through the YMCA, which she ran for three years. Lou designs and makes furniture, has been involved with the school since 2010, and has also taught in Australia, Canada, and the USA.

Lou has worked extensively with Michael Fortune who she met here on his first visit. Since then she has worked as his teaching assistant in Australia, NZ and the USA as well as making his privately commissioned furniture for the Canadian Embassies in Berlin, Chicago, Jakarta, and most recently for the Wellington Chancery in NZ.

David Haig

David is an internationally renowned furniture maker based in Nelson, New Zealand. Over the last three decades David has been commissioned to design and make a wide range of furniture for private clients all over the globe. David is highly respected in his field of expertise which is steam bending and curvature and is best known for his Signature and Monogram rocking chairs.

David has been involved with us since the very early days as well as regularly teaching at the Center for Furniture Craftsmanship in Maine for almost twenty years.

www.davidhaig.co.nz

Thorkild Hansen

3/6/1969-6/11/2021

Moe mai, moe mai, moe mai rā, e hoa  
We hold you in our hearts

Thorkild was born into a creative family environment - his father Jens Hansen was the renowned Danish silversmith. Much of Thorkild's former working life was spent designing and creating jewellery in the family business. After a change in career to furniture making and teaching, Thorkild's furniture design was an amalgam of Danish modernist design, exploring functional simplicity with a focus on materiality within the tradition of fine woodworking.

Thorkild inspired many, many of our past and existing students.

Tony Clark

After 25 years as a telecommunications support engineer, Tony decided it was time for a career change and in 2009 enrolled on the Furniture Makers’ Programme at the Centre for Fine Woodworking and from then on has made woodworking the career of his choice.

Tony runs the Jointworks Studio with Jane, making commission pieces, repairs and bespoke items for the studio. Tony believes that by reusing wood in a creative way then the tree lives on in a different form. In 2019 Tony was invited to design a range of introductory workshops here at the school and very successfully ran our first ever women only course.

www.jointworks.co.nz

Dave Gilberd

Dave Gilberd has spent a lifetime working with fine machinery - currently as owner-operator of the Brightwater Motors vehicle mechanics workshop but also as a qualified aircraft engineer, high-tech engineer, film set fabricator and motorbike fan-boy. Since taking a short instrument-building course in 2003 Dave’s heart has been most taken with guitar-building and further training at the Totnes School of Guitar-Making in the UK led to the launch of Goldbeard Guitars.

Dave has brought countless guitars into being - ranging from electro-acoustic, small body and blues style - has taught over 150 students the craft of instrument-building, and revived numerous old and damaged pieces.

www.goldbeard.co.nz

Geoff Korver

Geoff is based in Christchurch, and has been a woodcarver for more than 40 years, specialising in traditional forms, especially incised lettering and relief carving.

As an artist he has worked mainly on private commissions and exhibitions, and is currently making the transition to a full time artist.

Geoff Korver is an active member of the Canterbury Guild of Woodworkers, as a carver and tutor.

In 2014 Geoff was invited to teach an introductory carving course and spoon carving, and has since then developed a suite of carving courses that we run each year.

Grant Palliser

Grant embarked on his artistic career at the age of 38 when he completed a Fine Art degree and teaching qualification at Ilam School of Art. Initially he planned to make painting his primary focus but discovered sculpture and made it his major. In Nelson alone he has six public sculptures all of which are significant in some way to the Nelson community. 

Until recently Grant worked for many years as a part-time art teacher at Nelson College for Girls and has been a wonderful role model for young aspiring artists. More recently Grant has reconnected with painting and printmaking through participating in a residency in Ireland with other art educators. Grant teaches the drawing component of the Furniture Makers’ Programme.

www.grantpalliser.co.nz

Ben Grant

Following an apprenticeship in the UK, Ben worked on house renovations and refurbishments, but after a few years felt the draw towards more detailed work.

Returning to New Zealand he then made kitchens, cabinetry, stair building and CNC programming but still the draw towards fine furniture was unquenched. More recently Ben set up shop in his 50m2 garage ”plugging” away at a great variety of things.

Since attending the 2020 Michael Fortune Residency Programme Ben was invited to be involved in our “Emerging Tutor Project” kindly funded by Creative New Zealand.