From tree to table: the making of a Mouseman

For many, the skill of Robert Thompson, the ‘Mouseman of Kilburn’, and the work of the craftsmen who continue his legacy today, needs no introduction. From dining tables and dressers to cheeseboards, chairs and bookcases, that carved mouse signature has been at the heart of homes and part of the fabric of Britain for over a century. A list of places you may glimpse it running up the furniture or fittings reads like a Who’s Who of notable landmarks: Westminster Abbey, York Minster, Ripon Cathedral, Ampleforth College, Eton – as well as countless village churches, schools, castles and country houses up and down the country. Recent partnerships with the likes of gunmakers Purdeys or Alain Roux’s Michelin-starred restaurant, The Waterside Inn, continue to confirm Mouseman’s reputation as the most recognisable and collectible mark in handcrafted oak work in the world. What is less well known perhaps is what goes on behind that signature: the unique coming together of family, materials, process and craft that makes every Mouseman piece.

‘The story of every Mouseman begins with the wood.’

To call the oak trunks ‘logs’ feels like an understatement, but that’s how Ian describes them. What is actually being unloaded as we arrive at the Ampleforth sawmill, M J Wall & Sons, is the butt of a two-hundred-year-old oak tree about the size of a hatchback, from which the planks, or ‘boards’ will be cut. Three men are signalling and calling to each other over the noise of a crane arm attached to the back of a wagon. Once the log is lowered to the ground, Ian and Simon are soon on their haunches double-checking the ends for numbers and their marks carved soon after its felling. These confirm it’s a tree they chose, as well the felling date and the forest it came from.

After being chainsaw-trimmed, the log fits onto the conveyor of a huge cutting machine. The laser-guided blade with teeth as long as a little finger will precision-cut the wood into 50mm boards. At the controls is Thomas Wall. Helping him are his father, John, and his uncle, Kieran.

The air fills with wood dust and that intoxicating warm wood smell. With Ian and Simon watching on, the hardwood oak planks begin to emerge from behind the machine. Simon explains that nothing here is wasted. Shouting over the noise, he tells me that the offcuts become wood fuel; even the sawdust is turned into pellets for log burners. Once the huge saw blades become blunted, the sawmill cuts them up into rectangles. These are the scrapers the Mouseman craftsmen to use when hand-finishing and smoothing surfaces like table tops. It’s exactly the sort of symbiosis you find between local businesses that have long depended on each other. And it’s a rare thing.

Once the oak butt is cut, tea is brewed; jokes come out. I walk with Kieran to the sawmill yard’s gateway and take in the view over the Yorkshire panorama. Mist is drifting over the fields; the sky is turning gold and pink. Kieran sips his cuppa and, away from the others, confides what Mouseman really means to him.

The cut planks don’t travel far. Only a few miles down the road from the sawmill, the Mouseman timberyard on the edge of Kilburn is stacked with hundreds of logs cut into different thicknesses. Each board is separated by larch laths that let the air circulate, drying the oak naturally over years.

‘We have maybe five hundred logs here at any time. And that’s because all Mouseman furniture is only ever constructed from naturally seasoned English oak.’ Says Ian. ‘We don’t use kiln-dried timber. So, something like a table top is going to be a minimum four years in the drying time before it’s even taken up to the workshop. In most cases it’s more likely seven or eight years.’

Simon laughs when I ask why this matters so much. He cites the examples of whisky and Champagne and the ephemeral quality that comes with their natural maturation. In truth, he admits, there are more practical, cellular reasons too. Super-fast seasoning techniques can’t create the same kind of durability. ‘Wood is a living material’ Ian explains. ‘It lives in our homes; it breathes. When you age it fast so you can get more through a workshop, you lose that. It becomes rigid.’

Walking down the avenues of stacked wood, Simon and Ian are constantly sizing up the logs. They’re keeping an eye out for what might be trimmed on plank as well as reading any natural flaws and features that will be brought out in the crafting to add character to the finished furniture. ‘Honestly,’ says Ian. ‘The tree tells us what it wants to be. We just have to have the skill to listen.’

Today tuned ears are listening out for table tops. And Simon’s heard something. He calls us over to a stack, pulls out a couple of boards and points out the potential. A rough plank is a rich honeyed colour, the grain of the wood tight and dense. At its heart is a pattern of ribboning lines running across the growth rings from the centre. These are the naturally occurring medullary rays, the lines along which the sap moves as the tree grows. Once carved and polished they will create a beautiful silvery detail in the wood. ‘This central part will form part of a show-stopping table top.’ Simon confirms. ‘The rest might give us a cheeseboard or a chair leg. But we’ll use all of it.’

Spend time with father and son in this veritable cathedral to quality oak naturally seasoning away under Yorkshire skies, and you understand that this is far more than a place to stack wood – it’s an investment in the future. For this is where each Mouseman piece matures many years before it even reaches a craftsman’s bench. This is the space where this living material begins its journey. Small wonder Robert Thompson’s dying words to his grandson were ‘keep the timberyard full.’

It’s often said that one of the finest views in England is from Sutton Bank in North Yorkshire, site of a famous white horse, hewn into the hillside. In the distance, on a clear day, you might glimpse the top of York Minster; westward there’s the crumpled duvet outline of the Yorkshire Dales. Closer are the wooded fellsides and rolling fields where the village of Kilburn has been nestled into the landscape on the edge of the North York Moors since before the Domesday book was written. For the last 130 years, this place has also been integral to the story of Mouseman furniture. Not only was Robert Thompson born and bred here, but his Elizabethan timber-framed cottage and workshop remain the central hub and heartbeat of the business, housing offices, showrooms and visitor centre. It’s remarkable to think that every piece of Mouseman – whether a decorative chair for royalty or a cheeseboard – has only ever made right here. And it always will be.

Unsurprisingly, these buildings are also home now to draw upon draw of working drawings accumulated over the centuries, many hand-drawn by Robert Thompson himself. Ian retrieves a few. ‘The dining room table is one of our most popular pieces.’ He says. ‘We still today make the same table from the same plans great-grandfather drew up in the 1920s. And look at this…’

He pulls an old leatherbound notebook as thick as my arm from the shelf.

‘This is great-grandfather’s old order book. All handwritten with prices and customer’s requests. Here…’ He turns to a page. ‘…an order for a staircase for a hotel. That’s from 1933.’

Today the Mouseman workshop is situated behind the old cottage, up a flight of stairs. I follow Simon and Ian into a warm, sun-filled room alive with atmosphere. Light spills in sunny shafts across benches. Different oak components of tables, stools, settles, cupboards, wardrobes, drink’s cabinets, bedheads are being hand-crafted with chisels and handmade tools. Every Robert Thompson craftsman spends a minimum of four years as an apprentice meaning the level of skill is something to behold. To one side, someone is scraping at a cabinet top, using a lamp to pick out its details; to the other, a man is carefully finishing a latticework panel to go in the back of a chair.

Simon explains that once the wood has finished seasoning in the timberyard, it is cut to size according to designs and then brought up here. ‘At these benches we can begin the process of hand-carving the surfaces, the legs, everything.’ He explains. ‘This is where all the hours really come in. We even hand-make the dowels that we use to fix the joins. Nothing but oak gets used.’

The techniques may be centuries old and labour intensive, but they’re not being used for the sake of it. We stop by a bench where a young craftsman is fitting a thin tongue of oak between two planks of what will be a table top. Ian and Simon are keen to point out that, like the natural seasoning, this isn’t seen and yet it is integral to the build of the piece, giving solidity and strength.

‘Remember what I said about wood being a living material?’ Ian asks. ‘These details help furniture breathe in a home with all its temperature changes, keeping it tight, strong and bonded.’

Yet the most recognisable technique used in Mouseman pieces is designed to be seen. The rippled wood effect known as ‘adzing’ is akin to beaten copper. Created using a carpentry tool called an adze, it was a finish Robert Thompson fell in love with during visits to Ripon cathedral as a young man where he’d sketch pew ends and the fine woodwork of the choir stalls. Traditionally, adzing was a way to shape wood, but it became fashionable during the Arts & Crafts movement when Thompson was making his name. It’s been a finish of his workshop ever since.

In a corner of the room, in a beam of sunlight, we get to see how it’s done. A craftsman is swinging the adze over a complete table top placed on the floor. Each gentle strike lifts a layer of wood, rolling it into a curl that falls away from the sharp blade. Beneath, the light catches the pattern of oval indentations that look, to my eye, like the shimmering surface of the sea, really bringing out those seen in the timber yard – the marbling and medullary rays of the English oak.

Over at another bench, I watch the signature mouse being perfectly carved into a table leg. I hadn’t realised, but when each craftsman is qualified, they develop their own mouse to mark each piece as their own work. Some are narrower; some have wider faces. The ears can look different. And it strikes me that such details – the traditional techniques transferred through the generations, the attention to quality, the raw materials, the pride of the craftsmen in their work – this is Robert Thompson’s legacy as alive today as that characterful mouse. Simon agrees: ‘When you think of the centuries involved in the trees growing, the seasoning in our timberyard, the master craftsmen passing on the skills and all the hours spent in the workshop – that is what Mouseman is all about.’