Robin Hood the Movie, Russell Crowe, Ridley Scott and craftsmanship.

On May 12th Ridley Scott's epic Robin Hood opens Cannes film festival and it opens in UK cinemas on the 14th. Why write about this on a crafts blog? Well having spent a bit of time on set last year I know there was a huge amount of wonderful craftwork commissioned for the film. Ridley Scott is known for the detail of his sets and now I can see why.

 Even the stonework of the caste was convincing, I had to touch it before I could be sure whether it was stone or not.

I made lots of wooden bowls varying from simple humble drinking bowls and dishes to high status silver rimmed mazers. I sent this set last February see blog

 Then when they started filming apparantly Ridley Scott liked them so much he wanted a load more so in April I sent these.

 In July I got to visit the set and set up a bowlturners workshop with my old lathe, piles of shavings from my workshop floor and a set of tools I forged for the set.

I had imagined a set would look very fake or at best it would look OK from a distance and that when you walked round the back of a building it would all be plywood and screws. In fact it was more like walking round an ethnographic museum. There was lots of wonderful craftwork, baskets, coracles, rushwork, I heard the ropeworks at Chatham made "an awful lot of rope" 


This is a  blog  post from my set visit with links to some of the makers I knew about. 

There is plenty in the press at the moment, this Telegraph article  suggests that Robin Hood is a corruption of "Robin in the Wood" which gave me a giggle. I hope it will be a good film but I know the set in the background will be worth looking at.