Katie is 23 years old and first discovered woodturning through Scouting almost 10 years ago. She went on to join her local woodturning club to practise it as her skill for the Duke of Edinburgh Award scheme, carrying on for a number of years. 

At 16 years old she started working for Taylors Mirfield and began to grow her passion for turning, pushing and developing her skills before going full-time after the Covid 19 pandemic. 

She spent lots of time practising and honing her skills before applying to join the Register of Professional Turners; at the same time she was invited onto the Emerging Turners Programme which has included invaluable training from some great professionals. 

After being accepted onto the Register in 2022 she became the youngest ever to have joined.

Now spending her time teaching and demonstrating, forever growing her love and appreciation for turning, she can’t see herself doing anything else!

Social media: Instagram: @kt.turnings Facebook: Kt Turnings 

Ruby Cler was born in Sudbury Ontario Canada and continues to live in Canada. She started turning as a hobby in the late 70’s. Realising she enjoyed it, she used her vacation time to take classes with such people as Allan Batty, Stuart Mortimer, David Springett, Jean Francois Escoulen, Alain Mailland, Jean Claude Charpignon and a host of other people. Today Ruby isstill open to learning new things. After 36 years of teaching school, she began turning full time and continues to do so. A couple of years ago she was thrilled to be accepted on to the roll of the Register of Professional Turners.

When she taught school, Ruby painted a banner that hung across the front of her classroom.  It read, “There is nothing you can’t do, only things you haven’t learned.”  She still livesby that philosophy and thinks it sums her up as a person.

Emma Cook (known within the woodturning community as The Tiny Turner) has been involved with the craft since she was 16. Now, 25 years later, Emma is the youngest Chair of the Register of Professional Turners. In addition she runs her own woodturning business selling kits and supplies to woodturners and crafters as well as demonstrating throughout the UK, Europe, America and Australia.

Emma is a popular demonstrator and is regularly invited back to clubs where she teaches people how to make the various projects using the kits she has developed. Over the years, she has taught woodturning to hundreds of people with her laid back and accommodating style.

As well as woodturning, Emma had an apprenticeship in traditional wood carving for many years and enjoys combining the two disciplines. Her proudest piece of work is ‘Errol’ – a dragon she carved based on a drawing by Paul Kidby of the Discworld novel character (created by Sir Terry Pratchett). It took her over 6 years to complete but sadly she does not have much time to carve these days. However, by combining the turning and carving together, Emma is able to keep her skill set active and this is something she loves to pass on where she can.

Christopher Fisher RPT, known as the Blind Woodturner, is currently the UK’s only completely blind professional and accredited Woodturner.

Born in 1969 in Eccles, Manchester, Chris lost his sight in 2008 at the age of 39, and over a period of four weeks due to Toxoplasmosis. Following a year of rehabilitation to relearn basic life skills, and after coming to terms with the impact of losing his sight – with side effects including anxiety, hallucinations and muscle spasms – Chris took up woodturning so that he could make himself a vampire stake! He’s a huge horror film fan!

Chris is a self-taught Woodturner, acquiring his initial knowledge by listening to YouTube video tutorials for over 600 hours. He turned his first commission in 2014, and became a full time self-employed Woodturner in 2018.

Chris uses both traditional and modern carbide tools and owns four lathes. His ambition is to become a sought after and respected Woodturning artist like his hero and mentor, Nick Agar. Chris specialises in creating textured sensory and tactile pieces of art and enjoys the challenge of applying colour, both freehand and using stencils.

He set up a YouTube channel to share his experiences in woodturning, and to challenge the perceptions of what people with disabilities can achieve. It has evolved into a channel with over 8000 subscribers, and Chris’ goal is to inspire others by demonstrating that anything is possible, and to show the world that having a disability isn’t the end, it’s just a new beginning.

Phil Irons is a world-renowned woodturner recognised for his expertly crafted vessels and hollow forms, distinguished by their clear, fluid shapes and elegant flowing lines. He employs contemporary, coloured dyes to accentuate the natural beauty and hidden grain patterns of pale woods, which he sources primarily from tree surgeons. In addition to his turned forms, Phil creates unique woodprints from the logs he selects, capturing the raw, unaltered state of the material before transformation. These prints are often displayed alongside the final vessel, offering a compelling visual narrative of the wood’s journey from its natural state to a refined artistic piece.

Emmet Kane is an award-winning yet self-taught wood sculptor who lives and creates in Ireland. Kane uses mainly Irish wood that comes from sustainable sources.  His work is constantly developing and evolving, but is largely based around hollow forms and large wall pieces. An example is “PS19EK” which he was created in the early part of this century; itfeatures his distinctive use of gold leaf with ebonised oak and ever-evolving textures to create stunning pieces of wall art. The artist has started to use graphite powder on finishing the pieces which gives them a metallic finish.  Kane is excited by the challenge of making, creating and always finds ways of pushing his skill.

After a career as a sound engineer in radio and television, Ronald thought it was time to start earning real money. Turning wood! It had been his hobby for many years and so it only had to be professionalised. He would become a real artist. Get up late, read the newspaper, take it easy to the workshop, work until about 4 o’clock and then slip into evenings of debauchery with a lot of wine and women. So far the part with the wine has been successful, though it has already been curbed again…

Ronald is a professional woodturner now. He makes batches of bowls, funeral urns, knobs, lampshades and everything else that you can think of… and unfortunately nothing artistic these days… Besides that, he runs a web shop with stuff for other woodturners – and has become the Dutch national woodturning question desk, or so it sometimes seems… For fun, he built the “Mastodon” together with Jan Hovens: a device for coring bowls.

Stuart is a certified Master Turner and expert in twisted hollow forms who has published the definitive work on this technique.

He is a retired Police Inspector who became a proficient amateur turner before his retirement in 1989. Following his retirement he won several National competitions after which he started to demonstrate, judge and write for National and International magazines. His reputation grew at home and abroad. He is now well known and admired in international wood turning circles for his variety of work, fresh ideas and spiral work; he travels widely attending seminars and exhibitions as a sought after teacher and demonstrator.

Stuart is a Liveryman with the Worshipful Company of Turners, London and a Freeman of the City of London; he is also on the Register of Professional Turners (RPT). He is a member of the AWGB and the Society of Ornamental Turners (SOT) and he is a member of the American Association of Woodturners (AAW).

He is the holder of the World Record for the largest bowl turned out of one piece of wood – this was turned in 1997 in the USA, and has been authenticated and certified by the Guinness Book of Records.

Pascal Oudet is a wood artist working and living near Grenoble in the French Alps.
By working on carefully selected trees, he creates on the lathe very thin pieces he sandblasts up to transparency, creating a real lace out of wood which emphasizes all the history of the trees he’s working with.

This unique technique attracts interest from collectors, interior designers and art galleries worldwide.
His pieces are present in permanent collections of Ateliers d’Art de France, the American Association of Woodturners and the New York Museum of Art and Design, and in private collections in Europe, USA, Asia and Middle East. In 2021, one of his wall installation has been selected by the Musée des Pays de l’Ain, entering the permanent public collections of France.

In 2012, he obtained the Grand Prix de la Création de la Ville de Paris, in 2014 the visitors choice award in the Festival International des Métiers d’Art de Baccarat, and in 2023 the Liliane Bettencourt Award for Hand Intelligence, “Talents d’Exception”.
He has given demonstrations and classes in France, Spain, Belgium, England, Ireland, Germany and the United States.

Tomislav is a professional woodturner from Croatia. His journey started as a 15-year-old woodworking apprentice, specifically as a joiner. From the beginning he was lucky enough to be always paired with old masters of their trades; one was the last woodturning teacher in Croatia. He took Tomislav under his wing, who learned the basics in 3 years as an apprentice. 

Up to 2019 he was working in various woodworking shops as well as in the same woodworking school where he learnt his trade – but this time as a teacher. At this point he was turning roughly once a week making furniture parts and so on. That year, his uncle passed away; they were very close, and that drove him to take up woodturning as a career. With the help of his lovely wife, he bought the first lathe of his own.

During that first year, he was an effective turner, but not efficient enough. He found himself working up to 15 hours a day, then spending some time with his kids, after which he wouldthen spend evenings and nights turning for another 6-7 hours. This was clearly unsustainable, so he had to justify his time away from family and make himself efficient and fast enough to put food on the table. Woodturning was never a hobby for him.

At that point he saw a Richard Raffan video on fine woodworking about turning a bowl. It was game changer for him: this video led him to contact Richard about advice and tips and from that point changed the way he turns and how efficient he could be. Richard became hismentor in the following years, and he stresses that “I would not be the woodturner that I am today if it wasn’t for Richard’s help”.

A few years ago, he started a woodturning YouTube channel, aimed at passing on his passion for the craft and teaching others what he has learned. He now has over 70,000 subscribers, making it one of the largest woodturning channels on the platform.